Hi, I'm Neo. I'm a Esper Deathblade player from Germany who reached Top 8s and Top 16s at big Legacy event and this is my primer for my favorite deck:
Esper Deathblade

I.Overview

II.History

III.Decklists

IV.Card Choices

a.)Manabase

b.)Creatures

c.)Spells

V.Deathblade as a Stoneblade subtype

a.)Esper Stoneblade

b.)UW Stoneblade

c.)UWR Stoneblade

VI. Decks and Cards we don't like

I. Overview

Deathblade is a fair deck which uses powerful cards such as Stoneforge Mystic and Deathrite Shaman, from which it derives its name. As a subtype of the Stoneblade deck, Deathblade utilizes the natural combination of Stoneforge Mystic and powerful equipments, like Batterskull, Umezawa's Jitte, and sometimes a Sword of X and Y (a popular choice is Sword of Fire and Ice). Many decks have trouble dealing with these equipments, especially Batterskull which creates a 4/4 Vigilance Lifelink creature when it enters the battlefield. Deathbalde also employs other threats such as Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, True-Name Nemesis and sometimes even Baleful Strix. In addition to these powerful creatures, Deathblade also uses the best removal in the game in Swords to Plowshares, Abrupt Decay, and Council's Judgment; the best counters in Force of Will and Spell Pierce; and the best disruption with Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize. These cards are supported by the strongest planeswalkers: Jace, the Mind Sculptor, who can win the game by his own, and Liliana of the Veil.

To find what you need, Deathblade plays the best cantrips in Legacy: Brainstorm, Ponder. Some lists even include Sylvan Library to get even more card selection and advantage.

There is no "BEST LIST". Deathblade lists, especially those that use 4 colors, are flexible and different lists each come with their own advantages and disadvantages. The main goal of the deck is to exhaust the opponents resources and attack him with strong spells. See more under point IV. Card Choices.

II. History

Stoneblade decks first appeared in 2010 with Worldwake which gave us Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. The synergy of the both cards made it the Deck to Beat in Standard: Caw-Blade.

Players used this synergy in Legacy with powerful Legacy staples, such as Force of Will and Swords to Plowshares.

The deck quickly restructed itself quickly after the Return to Ravnica (October 2012) expansionís creation of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay, resulting in today's skeleton of Deathblade. Older builds of the deck included Geist of Saint Traft but in Commander 2013, a new creature appeared: True-Name Nemesis. This creature turned out to be the perfect creature for the deck; immune to spot removal, unblockable, and even stronger with any of the powerful equipments the deck runs attached to it.

For a more comprehensive reading on the more traditional Stoneblade decks, check out the UWx Stoneblade primer here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31962-Primer-UWx-Stoneblade)

An older list from 2013, this list is still playable right now, but over the time stronger cards hit the floor. For more decks and ideas about various decklists there are various sites like tcdecks, mtgtop8 or mtgpulse. You can check my most recent list here (http://deck.tk/5TbC8pZK).

IV. Card Choices

a.) Manabase - Deathbladeís mana base can be incredibly greedy and building and managing it is the hardest part about this deck. Fetching incorrectly or an opponent's Wasteland hitting an important land and you'll quickly find yourself unable to cast any spells. Deathblade lists traditionally use up to 4 colors: White, Black, Blue and a bit Green.

Most lists run about 21-23 lands with 8-10 being fetchlands, 2-3 wastelands, a few utility lands and sometimes up to 3 basics.

Deathrite Shaman helps the deck stabalize and ramps to play strong 3-drops on turn 2 or to allow a turn 2 wasteland into Stoneforge Mystic.

For utility lands, many lists often run Karakas. It produces white mana and has the unique ability to bounce a legendary creature like our own Vendilion Clique. In some lists you will find Academy Ruins, which is often used to bring back equipments or Baleful Strix.

Creeping Tar Pit is also a common choice which is safe against sorcery speed removal and is an unblockable creature.

b.) Creatures Ė Over the years the typical configuration of creatures has changed. Also every player has a different playstyle and may employ different creatures. Below are the typical core creatures, and other strong choices to slot in at your own discretion.

Core Creatures:

Deathrite Shaman: A playset Deathrite Shaman is the heart of Deathblade. He does everything in Legacy. He can provide a clock, manaramp, heal, and control graveyards. It's very common for him to eat removal due to how strong he is by himself.

Stoneforge Mystic: The second core part in Deathblade. 3-4 copies are typical. Many decks can't handle the Batterskull or Umezawa's Jitte that she finds. While she is a core creature, 3 copies is typically the amount you want to run as after you find Batterskull and Jitte, she's just a 1/2.

True-Name Nemesis: The main beater in the deck. Deathrite shaman allows him to come down on turn 2 and equipping him with either Jitte or Batterskull is usually game over.

Other creatures:

Baleful Strix: An amazing creature in creature matchups. Does everything for us. Replaces himself as soon as he resolves, can hold equipment, and can be pitched for Force of Will, not to mention he almost always trades up.

Snapcaster Mage: Another form of card advantage, allows you to use whatever spell you just need more of. Lists usually run 1-3 copies depending on how many instants and sorceries you end up running.

Vendilion Clique: A 3/1 flyer at instant speed that allows you to control the hand of the opponent and to get important information. Very strong with Karakas - Attacking on your turn and then bouncing and replaying him on your opponent's turn allows you to have a clock and control what answers they could have.

Leovold, Emissary of Trest: This new guy comes in :b::u::g: with a 3/3 body and a great ability. He blocks card draw like Spirit of the Labyrinth but only for the opponent. Besides that he lets us draw a card everytime a permenant or us becomes target of a spell or ability.

Fatties: Many different cards fit the role here including Gurmag Angler, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Tombstalker. Typical in Abzan lists, each of these cards here do essentially the same thing which is just beat the opponent. Delve allows them to be dropped very quickly and typically for only 1-3 mana.

Dark Confidant: A good creature, he was played a long time ago as a core creature. However, things have changed. He provides card advantage and can be great in a control meta, but be careful: revealing a Force of Will, Jace, or Batterskull will hurt. Not to mention that a lot of lists run a decent amount of 3 cmc cards, and the damage can add up. He is still pretty common in Abzan lists though.

Venser, Shaper Savant: He is pure control. With a Karakas out, you can lock your opponent out. Also he has a decent body with 2/2.

Monastery Mentor: A very uncommon and rare pick for the deck. In the right set up he can drive crazy and produces many big tokens.

c.) Spells Ė Deathblade is a flexible all-rounder. Your spells allows you to switch roles. From control to aggro and from control to aggro. Below are the typical core spells explained, and other spells you might want to have.
Draw and Manipulation
Brainstorm: This is the most important cantrip. It can find answers at instant speed. With a fetchland becomes Brainstorm a powerful tool to manipulate the quality of your hand and future draws by shuffling your library.

Ponder: Just like Brainstorm a cantrip. Ponder is a sorcery and the big difference is that it just looks at the top 3 cards.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor: The Brainstorm machine. This dude draws cards after cards and can even kill the opponent with his -12 ultimate. On his way for the kill, he keeps your opponent away from important spells.

Painful Truths: Black and card draw ? Yes, sure ! like an upgraded Night's Whisper we are able to control the amount of cards we want. And with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben we are able to spend 4 colors of mana on it ;)

Disruption
Thoughtseize: It trades their best card for 2 life. With Batterskull or Umezawa's Jitte not a big deal. Besides that it offers you information. Information about your opponent. Which deck they play and how they going to react to your spells.
Inquisition of Kozilek: The same as Thoughtseize with the difference that you don't lose life but restricted on spells with a total manacost of 3 or less.

Hymn to Tourarch: Let your opponent discard 2 cards and he doesn't have the choice. With the right follow up you are able to take a big advantage.

Liliana of the Veil: The second Planeswalker on our list. She brings control by her disruption and her -6 ultimate isn't deadly directly but for sure it will have its inpact.

Cabal Therapy: Another discard spell which requires a lot of knowlendge about other decks, but can hit multiple copies at he same time.

Removal
Swords to Plowshares: It's the point removal of choice. One :w: mana and every creature is gone. The life is most of the times not a big deal since Batterskull will close the game rather quickly.
Path to Exile: Like the brother Swords to Plowshares it gives the opponent a land instead of life. Mostly a sideboard choice as additional point removal.

Abrupt Decay: 2 Mana, Uncounterable, destroy target with manacost 3 or less. This is the reason for a green splash.

Fatal Push: One black and hits every important creature in the meta.

Tokens
Bitterblossom: An enchantment which produces a lots of tokens. Unanswered it will close the game. Or you use it to stop attackers; 4/5 Tarmogoy, 20/20 Marit Large ? Your damage is decreased to 1.

Lingering Souls: An aggressive sorcery. Also great to discard into Liliana of the Veil and flashback it. Pure value.

Counters
Force of Will: This is our #1 counterspell. Counter everything without paying any mana. We need it but depending on your build you could have to less blue cards to pitch something. Keep this in mind while you build your deck.

Spell Pierce/Spell Snare: Cheap and does the job. Great addition to Force of Will. While Spell Snare is a hard counter for 2 mana spells, we have Spell Pierce as a tax counter for non creature spells.

V.Deathblade as a Stoneblade subtype
The Stoneblade archetypes splits up in 4 subtypes: Esperblade, UW Stoneblade, Jeskai Stoneblade and Deathblade. Here are brief information about the other ones:

a.)Esperblade - A pure esper deck without green and Deathrite Shaman[cards]. Mostly with Lingering Souls as an aggressive card and [cards]Dark Confidant as cardadvantage.

b.)UW Stoneblade - This is the ancestor of all blade decks. A UW control deck using Jace, the Mind Sculptor followed up by Batterskull as a finisher. Many counters, many cantrips, much control.

c.)Jeskai Stoneblade - UWr Stoneblade is like an upgraded version of UW Stoneblade. By splashing red it uses Lightning Bolt as an additional removal and Pyroblast against other blue decks. With their many basics you will find Blood Moon in the Sideboard quite often.

VI. Decks and Cards we don't like

Here is a short overview how other decks can hit us.
Punishing Fire: Punishing Fire kills our best creatures and Planeswalker and comes back. Very annoying and in the best case you are able to get it hit by Surgical Extraction. Common Decks with Punishing Fire are: Aggro Loam,Punishing Maverick, Punishing NicFit, Lands
Wasteland: Wasteland can hit our greedy manabase pretty good and will make us cry. Common Decks with Wasteland are: Aggro Loam, Lands, Death and Taxes, Goblins, Delver decks.
Kolaghan's Command: With the upcoming 4c Control we have a new enemy. Command hits our equipment, hand and creatures. With Leovold we can get in serious trouble.

You see; Lands and Aggro Loam are big enemies and tough opponents. We can win by stopping their Life from the Loam, Dark Depths and removal. Usually they are using the graveyard. Rest in Peace and other hate can slow them down.
Another strong opponent is 4c control. This deck just outvalue us with their [cards]Kolaghan's Command[cards]. Force of Will is bad because it trades 2for1 and this is what Czech Pile wants to do. We need advantage on our side. Sword of Fire and Ice is great. It pressures the opponent and draws a card.

The Duck!!

09-07-2016, 10:48 PM

Hey guys! How's it going? Finished 2nd in a small 8-man legacy tournament last night. Ran this list.

The meta where I play is a bit diversed. Miracles, Sneak Show, Eldrazi, Combo (Ant or TES), DnT, Jund, Loam aggro and Shardless BUG. Also a few dredge and MUD. But recently, there are a few played lands.dec.

I was thinking of trying out collective brutality and invasive surgery off the side but don't know what to cut. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

PotatoSol

09-08-2016, 10:50 AM

So about Worship, I personally just have a really hard time against Eldrazi. 3 Baleful's main is great but they just have so many big fatties that I often die before I can stabilize. Maybe I'm just not playing the match up correctly but dropping a Worship seems like a free win against them. Not only that, but it helps against lands (they also can't deal with a true-name and have a hard time against enchantments), delver (they have to counter it or kill with deathrite), burn (should be a "i win" button), shardless (counter or bust) and probably a few other match ups I can't think of right now.

Neo900

09-08-2016, 11:20 AM

@duck
you have lots of removal also in your sideboard. beside that you can play Invasive Surgery in the slot of flusterstorm.Both cards do the same thing. I think surgery does a betteer job often times because it allows you to take the card out of the game. beside that it's a hard counter and a surgical extraction.

@potato
all is dust is a thing and all kind of eldrazi builds have access to it. beside that they often use ratchet bomb to get rid of nemesis or worship.
I saw lists with white and green to get disenchant or krosan grip and this green eldrazi which destroys artifacts to deal with hate.
or black versions for more disruption and removal like toxic deluge against nemesis. A reality smasher doesn't care about -1/-1.

Seraphix

09-08-2016, 01:37 PM

Eldrazi.
Worship seems strong unless they have specific sideboard cards. I don't keep up with the Eldrazi decks so I don't know how prevalent those cards are.

Lands
They bring in Krosan Grips anyway (mostly in anticipation of RIP), so they'll never be cold to Worship. Its not trivial to resolve a 4 mana spell against Lands either.

Delver
Probably very good here if you can resolve a 4 mana spell.

Burn
Seems very strong here.

Shardless
They have Pulse/G-Charm to answer the enchantment, not to mention its trivial for them to clean up our board with spot removal + Liliana, or Deluge. Not at all where I want to be in this matchup.

Neo900

09-10-2016, 08:45 AM

seraphix is right with his point. Against burn it could be hard too.
tomorrow is the big monthly tournament where I gonna play with the following list:

No Kaya and no Bitterblossom. During the last week I had so many situations where Kaya just did the same as Liliana would do or Liliana would be even better. Beside that Liliana has an ultimate which can bring a win.
Bitterblossom is a great card but the meta is quite fast with less control decks. Since I switched Kaya for Liliana I want 2 Souls again because they synergies with her more. It's like a free discard.
right now 3 wasteland to slow the opponent down and have plays like waste into stoneforge with a deathrite shaman.
sideboard: right now I play Nihil Spellbomb to get more advantage with deatrhite, snapcaster, Tombstalker and Lingering souls.

also new is the Tombstalker. the last week I tested and played against so many decks especially shardless bug and this 5/5 flying demon was unstoppable. the flying makes him so strong and is hard to deal with.
for the ones who are interested in abzan stoneblade. last week an abzan list could make the top8: http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=21310&iddeck=163276

The Duck!!

09-11-2016, 06:26 AM

@duck
you have lots of removal also in your sideboard. beside that you can play Invasive Surgery in the slot of flusterstorm.Both cards do the same thing. I think surgery does a betteer job often times because it allows you to take the card out of the game. beside that it's a hard counter and a surgical extraction.

@potato
all is dust is a thing and all kind of eldrazi builds have access to it. beside that they often use ratchet bomb to get rid of nemesis or worship.
I saw lists with white and green to get disenchant or krosan grip and this green eldrazi which destroys artifacts to deal with hate.
or black versions for more disruption and removal like toxic deluge against nemesis. A reality smasher doesn't care about -1/-1.

The reason for me to have a lot of removals is because there's not much control decks here where I play. Agree with the invasive surgery part so I'll be testing it to see how it goes. So in your opinion,what should I take out if you feel that I pack too much removals in my 75?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Neo900

09-11-2016, 10:54 AM

I count 12 creature removal spells. If you have such a problem with creatures try other removal not more. there are 3 mass removal and 9 point removal.
zealous persecution is a nice card. try out 1 zealous and 1 toxic deluge. try out some token producer. they allow you either to stall or to overrun. the problem is that you have to blast out every turn your point removal and he just lays creatures until your removal goes out.
sweep the board and follow up with a nemesis or Planeswalker. this plays will win the game.

aniso

09-11-2016, 05:45 PM

I just built up deathblade a couple weeks ago and I'm having a ton of fun with it so far. Do more experienced pilots have any suggestions for dealing with bloodmoon? I know deathrite can help in a pinch, but I'm also thinking about trying to run more than one basic main (I'm currently running a single swamp). Is it worth messing with the sensitive mana base to add another basic? And if so what would you prioritize?

ESG

09-11-2016, 10:04 PM

c.) Abzan Deathblade Ė Just like Esper (7a) Abzan Deathblade is named after Abzan Charm (not included). Abzan is a very special style of Deathblade and plays without blue. For card advantage Abzan lists are playing Dark Confidant and Sylvan Library. As big beaters Abzan Deathblade uses Tarmogoyf and one of the 3 Delve creatures (4b). There is no blue for counterspells, and instead Abzan uses discard as a form of proactive control in form of Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach and Liliana of the Veil.

Thank you for your effort writing a new primer, although I'm not sure a refresh was necessary. Please correct c.) above. There is no deck called Abzan Deathblade. The deck is called Junk or The Rock or Dark Maverick. Crucially, it predates Deathblade. It wasn't just a Deathblade variant. As a longtime member of this site, it's frustrating to read something as ignorant as "Abzan is a very special style of Deathblade."

There are some other issues with that section, too. Deathblade is a four-color deck by default. The deck you describe as Esper Deathblade is actually Esper Stoneblade, and the deck you describe as Shardless BUG is called Shardless Bant. Also, Punishing Maverick doesn't get a name change for splashing in a few Deathrite Shamans.

Neo900

09-12-2016, 02:22 AM

I deleted the whole section. the problem with all this archetypes is that there are no rules how to sort in a deck.
I would say that it was wrong to write it in this way as special deathblade variants. maybe "other decks playing stoneforge mystic" would be a better title. that part was not to be mentioned ignorant in anyway. I just wanted to list some decks I saw so far and their pilot declared as "deathblade". I wouldn't say that deathblade is always four colored. I saw many decks without any green mana source and without green spells especially abrupt decay.
Also Dark Maverick or Maverick in general is just different. Maverick plays hatebears like Thalia. They are playing Mother of runes, green suns zenith and more mana creatures. "Abzan Deathblade" is also disruptive but in a different way. It plays Dark confidant for card advantage. Discard spells like hymn to tourach, thoughtseize and liliana of the veil. Also there are Maverick decks which are playing without stoneforge.

@aniso
blood moon just kills us. we have to counter it or prepare for it. if I know I play against dragon stompy or even miracles I play Engineered Explosives on 3 and just wait until the blood moon comes and I can push this emergency button if necessary.
with 2 basics you have the ability to play Explosives on 3 also. I played as basics a swamp and an Island. the island allows you to play Brainstorm and let you dig into your deck to find answers. the swamp helps to cast deathrite shaman and fix our mana.

ESG

09-12-2016, 03:40 AM

I deleted the whole section. the problem with all this archetypes is that there are no rules how to sort in a deck.
I would say that it was wrong to write it in this way as special deathblade variants. maybe "other decks playing stoneforge mystic" would be a better title. that part was not to be mentioned ignorant in anyway. I just wanted to list some decks I saw so far and their pilot declared as "deathblade". I wouldn't say that deathblade is always four colored. I saw many decks without any green mana source and without green spells especially abrupt decay.
Also Dark Maverick or Maverick in general is just different. Maverick plays hatebears like Thalia. They are playing Mother of runes, green suns zenith and more mana creatures. "Abzan Deathblade" is also disruptive but in a different way. It plays Dark confidant for card advantage. Discard spells like hymn to tourach, thoughtseize and liliana of the veil. Also there are Maverick decks which are playing without stoneforge.

Thanks. That's probably for the best. "Other decks playing Stoneforge Mystic" would be fine if you wanted to point out what other decks run Stoneforge and an equipment plan, but that's a lot of decks, and they don't all play the same as Deathblade (such as Death & Taxes). Ditto for Deathrite Shaman. There are just so many different decks that Deathrite slots into that it's hard to draw meaningful comparisons in such an aside. Also, each deck's evolution was different even though they might all be running Deathrite now. My gripe was that you were lumping everything into Deathblade, which does a disservice to the evolution of those other decks. The deck you are still calling Abzan Deathblade is not actually called that. This is the thread: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19432-Deck-The-Rock
The deck existed long before Deathrite Shaman was printed, and long before Stoneforge Mystic was printed. I recognize that there is general slippage of deck names depending on the presence of hate bears. You are correct that Dark Maverick relies on Thalia whereas The Rock or Junk relies on discard spells and Liliana of the Veil. In short, use the correct name for the deck.

Neo900

09-12-2016, 04:03 AM

Thanks. That's probably for the best. "Other decks playing Stoneforge Mystic" would be fine if you wanted to point out what other decks run Stoneforge and an equipment plan, but that's a lot of decks, and they don't all play the same as Deathblade (such as Death & Taxes). Ditto for Deathrite Shaman. There are just so many different decks that Deathrite slots into that it's hard to draw meaningful comparisons in such an aside. Also, each deck's evolution was different even though they might all be running Deathrite now. My gripe was that you were lumping everything into Deathblade, which does a disservice to the evolution of those other decks. The deck you are still calling Abzan Deathblade is not actually called that. This is the thread: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19432-Deck-The-Rock
The deck existed long before Deathrite Shaman was printed, and long before Stoneforge Mystic was printed. I recognize that there is general slippage of deck names depending on the presence of hate bears. You are correct that Dark Maverick relies on Thalia whereas The Rock or Junk relies on discard spells and Liliana of the Veil. In short, use the correct name for the deck.

Maybe I will write a section like "other stoneforge decks" just to show alternatives.
You are right with your argument about the rock and I will notice it for the future. But just I said: different players call their decks different.
I am sorry that you had to complain about this and in the future when I speak about abzan decks I will refer to the rock.
I am thankful for your critics and that I could improve the primer.

ESG

09-12-2016, 03:47 PM

Thanks for your cooperation, Neo900. Now, let's get back to the Blade action ...

I just built up deathblade a couple weeks ago and I'm having a ton of fun with it so far. Do more experienced pilots have any suggestions for dealing with bloodmoon? I know deathrite can help in a pinch, but I'm also thinking about trying to run more than one basic main (I'm currently running a single swamp). Is it worth messing with the sensitive mana base to add another basic? And if so what would you prioritize?

I agree with Neo900's advice. It's a very powerful card against the deck.

Your best lines will be to mulligan for Thoughtseize or a fetchland-into-Deathrite opening when on the play, or a Force of Will play or draw. If you run Swan Song or Hydroblast in your sideboard, those are other cards that can save you. Engineered Explosives, as Neo900 pointed out, is one way to remove a Moon that resolved.

Running more extensive basics was discussed in the previous thread and has been discussed in the Shardless BUG thread. This is a common question for decks that roll over to Blood Moon. The general finding has been that it's not worth making your mana less consistent in every other matchup just to gain points against the Blood Moon decks. If Blood Moon decks are rampant in your area, the best strategy is to play something else for a while or, if you can't, have a sideboard with multiple overlapping answers for it, and plan to mulligan to hands that can stop or ignore a Moon. If you do decide to run more basics beyond the Swamp, I would start with a Plains, which would allow you to play Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. That's probably your best hope if the majority of your mana is shut off. Most players don't stick basic lands in their sideboard, but that is an option if you feel you have the space.

yotrixxx

09-12-2016, 06:14 PM

been playing the deck for about 2 months now and can not understand for the life of me why we want life from the loam, for reference im running a 2 wasteland build so its not like I have a high probability of wasteland locking someone with loam, and decks that are aggressively wasting me idk one loam to protect against it doesnt really seem too strong, am I missing something? is it just as a hedge?

Neo900

09-12-2016, 07:46 PM

life from the loam is not a must have card. an attack on our mana base can cost us the game. it's not the single life from the loam which brings us the win as soon as we play it. In match up where mana is important and lands can be attacked it's nice to have.
I played against delver and he was not that fast and tried to work on my mana base. that costed him stifles and land drops. so I cast life from the loam and getting all back and have the advantage. it's not about to lock the opponent out, it's just to make their actions useless.

aniso

09-14-2016, 09:06 AM

@Neo900 and @ESG thank you both for your thoughts on dealing with Blood Moon. It's not overly rampant in my meta, but shows up occasionally in Painter and UR Delver. I do run EE in the main so for now I'll stick to strong mulligan's for an answer before stretching the mana base too thin. It does seem like a bit of a toss-up as to whether an island or plains would be more appropriate after the singleton swamp. Although the island let's you dig for answers it doesn't necessarily let you cast them which makes me think if I do add another basic it should likely be the plains for stoneforge mystic.

Neo900

09-14-2016, 04:15 PM

that's a good descision. I would also have the space for a plains but I play Karakas over plains and I don't want 2 lands which give me only white mana.

Lormador

09-17-2016, 09:37 PM

I took my experimental "all 2 drop" list to the LGS yesterday and made top 4 with it, much to my surprise. The deck is:

...for mana I'm lazy, and Neo900 posted the perfect manabase for a Hymn deck a few pages back. It's amazing, and I will henceforth be copying his mana for all future Deathblade decks. With mana so sensitive in this deck, I don't want to give the impression I don't care about it, but at this point the ideal configuration is simply known, at least for Hymn decks.

Round 1: 4c Delver. I lose the die roll and game 1, lifeloss from TS and Bob sped up a Delver plus DRS kill. No Strix for me, and Mystic didn't show. Game 2 wasn't a contest, DRS lived, Plow and Waste took his things away, and I poured out 2 for 1s. Game 3 saw double Hymn into Deluge into Mystic.

Round 2 was against BR Reanimator. DRS took G1 after I won the roll. G2 I got rolled by a T1 Sire. G3 I got Surgicals and TS. I can't believe I won this MU, feels pretty bad.

Round 3 ID, play for fun, I steamroll a UR Delver deck and take a break.

Round 4 ID, play for fun against the mirror with TNN and Jace: the more usual version of the deck. You'd think that the advantage goes to the more controlling deck, but Hymn was such a beating that I took most of these games too. He couldn't hold on to those top end cards, and Dark Confidant kept my business flowing.

Top 8

Round 1: the Reanimator guy again. Lose the roll, and I only took G1 through Ritual, TS, Entomb, Reanimate because he missed the Karakas in my hand and went for Brand. He lost so much life that one DRS ping killed him. G2 I won off of double TS and Fluster, Tar Pit deals all 20 by itself.

Top 4, BUG Delver. G1 I don't have enough removal to kill Goyfs and Delver. G2, Null Rod, run over by Goyfs.

The worst card in the deck was Chrome Mox, which showed up often and did exactly nothing. The deck, in this form, is very much more dependent on equipment than ever before, and not having any creature big enough to deal with Goyf and Angler is problematic despite the 4 Strix.

Lemnear

09-17-2016, 10:13 PM

Needs less Hymns, more Snapcasters (solve your removal issue) and sideboard Surgical Extractions (see snapcaster). 8 Discard spells are too much to topdeck at unfortunate times

Neo900

09-18-2016, 05:14 AM

to get a better topdeck I would think about sylvan library.
You want to play more on cmc 2 but in case of discard liliana is too strong and does more than just discarding

Lormador

09-19-2016, 06:35 AM

That's quite possible as well.

I was thinking along these lines, although I think the +Snapcaster -Hymn also has merit:

...I want something that can really boss around Tarmos and I'm personally leery of TNN. I'd rather play Lingering Souls in my meta, but I also really want Dread of Night in my sideboard. Beating DnT handily is the reason I play this deck (when I play this deck).

Although the deck performed well, the idea of running so many 2 drops might not ultimately be that great. It often happens that 3 or 4 mana becomes available, and to waste those resources is also inefficient. It's not really possible to run out just a small number of lands like a Delver deck due to equipment and color requirements.

Neo900

09-22-2016, 07:47 AM

Gurmag Angler and Snapcaster Mage hate each other.
I like your changes and think that will make it better.
Jace is more like Brainstorm. Many times you will see that he wins games. He works good with the discard. Forcing your opponent into top deck situations and you control it with Jace. I am excited how your plan will work. I played Hymn as well but didn't like it much at the end. I am still a fan of Liliana of the Veil especially with the discard plan. Also jace and liliana are good friends and allow us to have pure control.

Divert is a great card especially against shardless bug.
Garruk Relentless is a great Planeswalker. Deathtouch tokens are great. he can kill opponents deathrite shaman or cycles creatures like stoneforge mystic after I got my equipment into play. His ultimate wins also games.

Neo900

11-11-2016, 01:56 PM

Hey everybody !
I hope this thread will become more active again :(
I'm still playing Deathblade (never stopped) and the past 4 weeks I took 3 top8s. 2 on bigger weekend events and 1 on the weekly at my lgs. You can check the biggest one here: Position 6 on monthly event (http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=21465&iddeck=164629). Besides my 6th place I was able to get a bye for the mkm series (european version of scg) in prague.
With the new Conspiracy I got a new friend: Leovold, Emissary of Trest. He is just great and helps out in so many match ups. Against punishing fire, shardless bug, miracles, elves, death and taxes...
I am testing right now some Sideboard options. My current one looks like this:

I don't play Baleful Strix anymore. Neither in the Sideboard nor Mainboard. There is literally no Eldrazi anymore and even if I hit this 1 Eldrazi player, I can win with my removal.
The 2 Dread of Night are just for Death and Taxes. The last times where between 10 Players 3 who played dnt. Priest hits more decks. Vial, Show and Tell, Elves (GSZ in General). I'm thinking about to cut one Containment Priest for a Grafdigger's Cage. The Cage can hit Miracles as well becaus he shuts down Snapcaster Mage making the Deck less redundant.
I have two upcoming events which are also Trials for Prague. One this Sunday and next week.
We will see how things are developing.
I hope this Thread comes more active in the next few weeks :)

OphelieSeize

11-12-2016, 12:05 AM

Long time lurker here and yeah it would be great to see more of this deck i know bant is doing really well right now but Deathblade holds a special place in my heart and blade decks have been my dream deck since i started playing which was during Caw-Blade standard.

Maybe we can get some good discussion going here, first off i wanted to see what you guys thought about Gurmag vs Tombstalker, right now i'm running Gurmag but it seems like i really wouldn't mind especially in the later turns when gurmag is coming down to be dropping a stalker instead, just cause the flying is so huge to have in this deck with the equipments, also it has felt like recently 3 SFM has been perfect, with 4 i felt like i was drawing them way to much and once you've fetched your 2 equips up she is soooo dead.

Also Toxic Deluge vs Explosives is another dilemma i am facing, they are both so good for the deck but i feel like when i run 1 over the other i end up really missing the utility they both offer, maybe it is correct to run both? Like EE can avoid counterbalance and it's colorless which is really nice, and i really like being able to hit whatever with it especially with access to 4 colors, but it's honestly a much worse creature hoser vs DnT and Elves i end up missing deluge MB.

And last but not least thoughts on Spell Pierce, it is a nice card but the deck seems like it really wants to be deploying threats heavily rather than trying to answer all of them, what do you guys think?

Neo900

11-13-2016, 03:00 AM

The flying makes the difference between Tombstalker and Angler. Most of the times it doesn't matter if I pay 1 or 2 mana.
Some players say 4 sfm others 3. I play 3 for the reason that the mystic can Cheat batterskull into play. The only bonus with Jitte is that's uncounterable and instant speed but costs also 2 mana. But I thinking about 4 since I play a third equipment in the sideboard and have 3 after boarding which works better with the full set of mystic.
The one off spell pierce seems bad but many times I need just a cheap counter on turn 2 to protect something. Sometimes I need it in the late game when my opponent taps out for an entreat or green suns Zenith. It's way more flexible as you think. And you can bring it back with Snapcaster Mage easily.
I love explosives. And it's so good in many match ups that I want to play it Mainboard. I have most of the times a suprise factor.

ClimbGneiss

11-14-2016, 10:23 PM

Hello all:

I'm brand new to posting on here so please bear with me if I make some mistakes in terms of forum rules.

I've been playing legacy for many years now and have been settled on deathblade for the past couple of years.

The list that I am running below, I've had resounding success with at my weeklies.

First of all, I apologize for not including the links to the cards. I could not seem to find the instructions on how to do so.

Now to discuss the list. I've had sustained, steady and predictable success with this list. Sideboarding is obvious, and very few decks have an obvious edge, especially in post board games.

I have been seeing many list going without True-Name. This is a grave mistake versus several decks, including death and taxes, lands, miracles, delver and shardless. Of course each of these decks has their answer, but True-Name is an important step to controlling the game.

Next, I see that that dominant tech is to run 4 Stoneforge Mystic and 2 equipment, batterskull and jitte. To me, this is the worst kind of hedging. If you were convinced that two equipment was best, then 3 stoneforge mystic would be the number to go with. However, I am convinced that sword of fire and ice is the best equipment of the bunch and it really isn't all that close. Against combo, miracles and lands, Sword of fire and ice is the clear choice.

My list really emphasizes the card advantage angles of the deck. Sword of fire and ice, jace the Mind sculptor, snapcaster, and last, but not least, Lingering souls.
Lingering Souls is one of those "easy to know when to side out" cards, but is righteous when you are in a good matchup. Against miracles and shardless, it pulls you ahead (against miracles) and closer to even (against shardless).

I run 3 basics, one of each. My meta includes 2 of the most experienced lands players there are, the most experienced Blood moon player I know of, and several delver and midrange players packing full sets of wastelands. Perhaps, in a large tournament meta, I could be convinced to run just one basic, probably the swamp.

Finally, I stole the mana leak idea from a friend at the local store, who also posts on here. Mana leak, and diabolic edict, both dodge the poor mana that this deck often deals with the start the game AND are unexpected based on your mana available (for example, a Scrubland and a Tundra might make your opponent think the coast is clear because they might think you are on Counterspell ).

The sideboard:
I think in esper, it is important to run creatures in the board, and as many as possible. Also, running as many flash creatures as sensible works really well. Flash creatures, such as Snapcaster Mage being used as ambush viper, routinely wins miracles matchups. Therefore, I run 2 Meddling Mage, 1 Containment Priest, 1 Sanctum prelate, and 1 Gaddock teeg. Gaddock Teeg isn't ideal, I'll admit, but the matchups you want it the most, it's amazing and you probably won't be punished for fetching the trop aggressively. Sanctum prelate has worked really well when paired with Meddling Mage to completely shut down a deck. For example, cast Meddling Mage versus shardless and name decay. Next turn cast sanctum prelate and name the number 3. Unless shardless is running Disfigure or casts a Jace, the game looks solidly in your favor. My meta has a strong graveyard reliance. I run two Surgical extractions and one rest in peace. I'd cut the rest in peace in a more standard meta as it hurts our deathrites and snapcasters.

Thoughts? I truly think this is the direction we want to go towards.

I will make one note. I will soon be trying a list cutting the main deck Lingering Souls, the mana leak and the Diabolic Edict for a 3rd Underground Sea and a Dimir charm. I'm not thrilled with the idea but I think my list needs to up the land count and Lingering Souls is the most polarized card in that it's awful or amazing based on the matchup.

Neo900

11-15-2016, 02:06 AM

Welcome !
You can link cards like: cards name /cards
cards and /cards have to be in brackets [ ]

Your list is very interesting. Diabolic Edit can be strong. Mana leak is okay. Counterspell would be stronger of course. I played also Lingering souls but switched to Bitterblossom. You have a reason to play 4 mystics. I am thinking about it because I play a 3rd equipment in my sideboard. you are playing pure esper without green spells. I tried it also but abrupt decay is too strong.
I like vindicate. a simple destroy any permanent. But True-Name nemesis is a thing and sometimes they can use abilities of the target permanent. Council's Judgment is also a catch all removal but a bit harder to cast with double white.
I am playing also a swamp and an island but instead of plains I want Karakas. It helps you in many match ups and Lands or aggro loam have to find a wasteland for it.
Baleful Strix is also a good card and trades always 2 for 1. either with a creature or with removal which means less removal for stoneforge mystic.

ClimbGneiss

11-15-2016, 09:45 AM

Welcome !
You can link cards like: cards name /cards
cards and /cards have to be in brackets [ ]

Your list is very interesting. Diabolic Edit can be strong. Mana leak is okay. Counterspell would be stronger of course. I played also Lingering souls but switched to Bitterblossom. You have a reason to play 4 mystics. I am thinking about it because I play a 3rd equipment in my sideboard. you are playing pure esper without green spells. I tried it also but abrupt decay is too strong.
I like vindicate. a simple destroy any permanent. But True-Name nemesis is a thing and sometimes they can use abilities of the target permanent. Council's Judgment is also a catch all removal but a bit harder to cast with double white.
I am playing also a swamp and an island but instead of plains I want Karakas. It helps you in many match ups and Lands or aggro loam have to find a wasteland for it.
Baleful Strix is also a good card and trades always 2 for 1. either with a creature or with removal which means less removal for stoneforge mystic.

Actually, the cards that you list is how I envision Deathblade in a greedy-manabase-friendly meta.

In that world, I would run 2 Abrupt Decay in the main and 1 in the side. Council's judgement I would only run if there were a lot of true-names running around. Personally, I like Lingering Souls over Bitterblossom for two reasons: 1, there is no loss of life, and the loss of life isn't irrelevant. 2, Lingering souls is better CA. If you run LOTV, souls pairs nicely. However, against shardless and it's endless hymns, souls can really keep you in the game.

Here is my "greedy mana base" Deathblade list I wrote up and never played some time ago.

Also, let me defend Mana Leak for a moment. Deathblade suffers a few downsides. 1, it isn't so powerful that it can easily shut down any deck, you really need to win the first 4 or 5 turns and be very tight in your play. And 2, it's mana base. I strongly believe that running at least 2 basics, if not 3 is correct. I have more examples than I can count of winning because of basics (including the plains) and many examples of losing off of mana screw.

Karakas I don't think is necessary. Versus lands, they are happy to wait a turn and Wasteland you. Untapped Plains is much more difficult for them to deal with. Especially if you have a Fetchland reserved as backup to battle them porting you down. Versus Show and Tell, you could certainly use it, but that matchup should DEFINITELY be in our favor, especially post board. Always fetch for sword of fire and ice to load up your hand with interaction.

One side note:
What are your thoughts on how to improve the shardless matchup? I am partial to the idea of Misdirection and Notion Thief. Notion Thief has more blanket utility and it's a flash creature which is extremely useful to close out a game by surprise. Misdirection has single handedly won me a game vs shardless but I don't like it versus any other matchup.

Neo900

11-15-2016, 10:36 AM

Shardless bug is an awful match up. we have to play every form of card advantage we have. I play Divert in my Sideboard which is great and main Leovold,Emissary of Trest. He is also great with their discard and removal. lingering souls is the better choice in this match up. the problem is that force of will is not great against them. they want to trade 2 for 1 and force does the exact same thing. Cards which produce tokens are good because we can get Advantage over the board. Right now there is nearly not a single shardless in my meta.
you are right. with green you become more and more greedy and blood moon destroys you. I guess it's a players choice and preference because both can work. I like to play karakas but this depends on the meta. I can say for sure that I will play next tournament against sneak show or reanimator. Also I like the fact that I can bounce my own vendilion clique and leovold.

ClimbGneiss

11-15-2016, 10:47 AM

Shardless bug is an awful match up. we have to play every form of card advantage we have. I play Divert in my Sideboard which is great and main Leovold,Emissary of Trest. He is also great with their discard and removal. lingering souls is the better choice in this match up. the problem is that force of will is not great against them. they want to trade 2 for 1 and force does the exact same thing. Cards which produce tokens are good because we can get Advantage over the board. Right now there is nearly not a single shardless in my meta.
you are right. with green you become more and more greedy and blood moon destroys you. I guess it's a players choice and preference because both can work. I like to play karakas but this depends on the meta. I can say for sure that I will play next tournament against sneak show or reanimator. Also I like the fact that I can bounce my own vendilion clique and leovold.

In "greedy" deathblade, I love the idea of Leovold. And, in that line of thought, if you are running Clique and Teeg, it really helps to have a Karakas versus Miracles.

ClimbGneiss

11-15-2016, 10:50 AM

Versus Shardless,
I board out all of my countermagic. I bring in rest in peace because it hurts them more and it strains their Abrupt decays (think of how miracles employs this sort of game plan ). I bring in as many addition creatures as I can so that I can fight through the removal and stick an equipment on a creature. Batterskull is obviously the best equipment. Creeping Tar Pit is super useful if you can avoid wasteland.
Pithing needle on Liliana of the Veil is also a great line.

Seraphix

11-15-2016, 04:20 PM

...

Finally, I stole the mana leak idea from a friend at the local store, who also posts on here.

...

You're welcome :tongue:

Hey everybody !
I hope this thread will become more active again :(
I'm still playing Deathblade (never stopped) and the past 4 weeks I took 3 top8s. 2 on bigger weekend events and 1 on the weekly at my lgs.

...

I hope this Thread comes more active in the next few weeks :)

I'm still lurking, but haven't played Deathblade at all recently. The last few events I played it in went awfully. The deck is just very poorly positioned against both Shardless and Miracles. That might be ok if I was beating all the other decks, but I wasn't as the deck is really no more than 50% in any matchup. I won't pretend I play the deck optimally, but I need to cool it off for a while. I'm not sure what kind of shift or new printing can make this deck competitive again barring Miracles getting hit by a banning.

ClimbGneiss

11-15-2016, 05:48 PM

You're welcome :tongue:

I'm still lurking, but haven't played Deathblade at all recently. The last few events I played it in went awfully. The deck is just very poorly positioned against both Shardless and Miracles. That might be ok if I was beating all the other decks, but I wasn't as the deck is really no more than 50% in any matchup. I won't pretend I play the deck optimally, but I need to cool it off for a while. I'm not sure what kind of shift or new printing can make this deck competitive again barring Miracles getting hit by a banning.

I can't claim to have a great record versus Shardless; however, Seraphix can attest that I have been regularly taking down or placing in the top 4 of our weekly events. And, we have several extremely skilled players in our meta. I feel very comfortable against miracles.

I like the idea of Atraxa, Praetor's Voice in greedy Deathblade. Feels like it would be good in the shardless matchup. Strap a sofai to it and the only answer would be Lilly or Deluge (with Deluge being an acceptable result)

Neo900

11-16-2016, 12:27 AM

atraxa seems good. but I guess a hymn will hit her before you can cast her. also maelstrom pulse hits her. jitte and profilate let you get every turn 3 counter.
I made some test games against a friend and as long as I had leovold on turn 2 he wasn't able to win

Seraphix

11-16-2016, 07:36 AM

atraxa seems good. but I guess a hymn will hit her before you can cast her. also maelstrom pulse hits her. jitte and profilate let you get every turn 3 counter.
I made some test games against a friend and as long as I had leovold on turn 2 he wasn't able to win

I think that expensive, powerful spells are a trap for us in the Shardless matchup. Efficient threats that generate CA like Bitterblossom, Dark Confidant, Lingering Souls, or Leovold are actually the best place to be.

ClimbGneiss

11-16-2016, 09:35 AM

I think that expensive, powerful spells are a trap for us in the Shardless matchup. Efficient threats that generate CA like Bitterblossom, Dark Confidant, Lingering Souls, or Leovold are actually the best place to be.

I wish our local meta was conducive to running non basics so I could run Leovold and Abrupt Decay without fear. Oh well, I will just have to console myself to running basics Plains and casting Stoneforge versus Blood moon.

OphelieSeize

11-22-2016, 10:23 AM

Recently went to a smaller legacy tournament and had really good results with the deck went 3-0-1 and got first with 10 points here is how the matchups went.

Round 1

I would do a more detailed write up of these games but the deck i was facing was a very janky homebrew deck and had no real chance of winning, it was some white deck with Shadow on all of it's creatures and jitte, i guess the idea was to get counters while being unblockable but it just went no where with how much removal i am packing and how much he literally can't do anything to stop True-Name Nemesis, needless to say it was an easy 2-0.

Round 2

I was against Grixis Delver which is a very even matchup, round 1 i was able to grind him out and secure the win with a resolved True-Name, game 2 i side in extra removal and counter spells, he wins this matchup after i mistakenly try to play around what i believe to be a daze in his had trying to resolve a TNN, but it wasn't and he ended up land locking me with a hand full of action, game 3 was a short game and ended up going to turn 5 on time the turn i was going to swing in with a lethal Tombstalker and TNN suited up with jitte, which was very unfortunate but it shows that had i had a little more time on this round i would have 4-0'd

Round 3

Guy mulligans to 4 first game and then 5 the next game playing loam, both games ended rather quickly as i was putting to much pressure on for him to get any of his engines going.

Round 4

Guy was on mono red Goryo/Sneak Attack deck with pyroblasts and seething songs, the deck actually was 3-0 at that point and actually seemed fairly decent, game 1 i mulled to 5 and he ended up resolving a Griselbrand, time for game 2 i sided in a Chill, Humility, Spell Pierce, Containment Priest and something else, i dropped all of my removal since i was dead anyway if he got anything on the board, i was able to counterspell all of his relevant stuff until i resolved a JTMS, i used +2 every turn to try to keep him off threats while i rebuilt my hand, the strat ended up working really well and i eventually ulted for the win.

Here is the Decklist i used for the tournament, this isn't exactly where i want the deck to be but i didn't have all the cards i wanted to put in it so i settled for a few extra copies of cards.

I really want to try 3 Stifle MB and another Spell Pierce, also need a Liliana in the deck instead of 1 of the JTMS, this meta is incredibly fast right now and if we can make Deathblade just a tiny bit faster i think the deck can really shine.

Neo900

11-22-2016, 02:52 PM

Stifle is a tempo card and we are a control deck. we want to tap out and create advantage with powerful cards. stifle will bring you in bad situations because you have to keep your mana open.
more spell pierce depends on your meta.

I played a bigger event at sunday and became third place with 4-1-1.

Round 1: Elves 2-1
He made big mistakes both games. Engineered Plague killed him. The one I lost was against Progenitus.

Round 2: MUD 2-1
A strange player. Playing for many years magic and this deck but not good. often times producing mana to untap grim Monolith and tap it again for 3.

Round 3: Dredge 2-0
First two turn Deathrite Shamans, win. Second game first turn Nihil Spellbomb, second turn containment priest.

Round 4: BUrG Delver 1-2
Very grindy. I lost the last game because I was too greedy.

Round 5: Grixis Delver 2-0
A friend of mine. Sword of Fire and Ice could bring the win.

Round 6: Omnishow 1-1
We managed a draw. I knew he is playing Omnishow and I had nothingn in my Sideboard to win this.

Ruta Barracuda

11-23-2016, 11:26 AM

Stifle is a tempo card and we are a control deck. we want to tap out and create advantage with powerful cards. stifle will bring you in bad situations because you have to keep your mana open.
more spell pierce depends on your meta.

While I understand what you meant, I don't think it's out of the question at all to run a Tempo Deathblade strategy, especially since players have run it that way in the past. My only question is if Bant Deathblade just does the tempo strategy better with Noble Heirarch.

Neo900

11-23-2016, 12:13 PM

Well Exalted is a thing.
Sure many tried Stifle but there is a reason why there are no stifles in top 8 lists.
Bant Decks are also playing Daze.
The biggest problem is that Stoneforge Mystic is like a time walk.
casting Stoneforge, searching batterskull, waiting a whole turn and then put it into play. Stoneforge Mystic pushes us into the midgame just by being slow.
You can look here in the Bant thread. Maybe you can get some information and input there.

Ruta Barracuda

11-23-2016, 12:25 PM

That's pretty much my point - if you want to run Stifle, I think Bant just does the tempo strategy better, mostly due to Noble Hierarch.

Neo900

11-23-2016, 01:20 PM

Bant focuses more on mana acceleration with 4 hierarch and 4 shaman. But I guess you a black splash like Deathblade the green splash. Abrupt decay is too strong to ignore and shaman's abilities are worth it too.
If you search a more tempo oriented deck try delver. Patriot Delver is an uwr deck with stoneforge and delver and can be very aggressive with lightning bolts

Qweerios

11-23-2016, 05:06 PM

When I look at my Deathblade vs current Bant deck, they are very similar... The only differences are:
-3 Thoughtseize +3 Nobles
-2 Spell Pierce + 4 Daze
2 Snapcasters become SoFaI and a 4th Nemesis
Cut all the basic lands for a Wasteland and the last 2 Daze

Both decks play in a similar fashion and have similar tools. It basically comes down to Noble (therefore Daze) or Thoughtseize (therefore Snapcaster) and whether you preffer dorks to basic lands.

DeathBlade is favored in the mirror with superior hate in the form of Liliana, Deluge and ZP postboard that impact Bant way more.

Saab93

11-23-2016, 09:58 PM

I played deathblade at my local weekly, and one of my match ups was the bant blade deck. Ended up winning 2-0. I feel like regular deathblade is heavily favored in the match up. At one point I thoughtseize'd him to see stifle and jace in the same hand and internally cringed.

We had similar opening lines in game 1, but he was shocked when I abrupt decayed his sword of fire and ice. During sideboarding he asked how I liked the main board abrupt decay, which let me know he thought he was facing the exact mirror match (bant vs bant).

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Neo900

11-24-2016, 12:16 AM

Bant is usually uwg but I see the point why someone splashes black: 1.) Deathrite Shaman 2.) Abrupt Decay 3.) Sideboard
Every time I Play against Bant I have the feeling that they don't have any pressure on my or control. Removal on their hierarch or shaman is even too much and a thoughtseize hits them every time so hard :rolleyes: I would play Bant like an AggroLoam with Knight of the Reliquary and Life from the Loam. Blue is like a splash for Counter and cantrips. I guess Bant have to change their strategy to compete against Deathblade because we can handle them too strong in the early game that the tempo plan might not work.
Another matchup which is strange is Maverick. I have the Feeling that Maverick is the child from Deathblade and Death and Taxes but rised by the stepfather Aggro Loam. Every match I played against Maverick (or Bant) was like " oh you have something great. I can do the same thing, but better"

The list used to have a 3rd ponder to facilitate a lower land count, I am currently testing this 20 land build and so far it does work out with 4 deathrites, 6 cantrips and a curve that tops out at 3.

I am looking for some feedback regarding the manabase and sideboard I am currently running. My meta has experienced a significant uptick in Eldrazi, Jund and Loam (both lands as well as aggro loam) strategies but is generally very diverse therefore I need hate both for the fair and unfair part of the metagame and cannot skew my board too much in one direction.

I would very much appreciate your feedback because building a deck that suits the personal playstyle preference often results in being a bit routine blinded after a while :D Thank you in advance :)

Neo900

11-28-2016, 05:51 AM

I like the list. the meta is quite fast right now and giving up some expensive cards like jace and add more cantrips can help.
I was in Prague this weekend and there was a deathblade delver list.by giving up the late game you are more powerful in the early game with daze protection and delver as a fast clock. I went to the top 8 with his list.
I am going to try to cut expensive cards also and try to hit early after I went 4-5 in the mainevent. With delver you want lingering souls over bitterblossom for the flip and the aggressive play style.
after all the time bitterblossom became my signature card :( xD

ThE_jOkEr

11-28-2016, 06:41 AM

I really wanted to go to Prague too but unfortunately my friends had to make the trip without me because work was merciless and didn't allow me to be absent the weekend for the MKM series. The last time I was in Prague I played BURG without Delver which performed quite well but I missed the raw power of the slower stoneforge shell that makes it easier to play over the top of fringe strategies and helps a lot against burn which being a budget deck is always on my radar for such events.

But back to topic - I think the bitter blossom offers a lot of utility against miracles and similarly to Goyf which is a needed tool against the decks that needs to be clocked fast (e.g.: storm variants) it is a threat you can deploy T2 and can keep up disruption afterwards. What I am unsure about is if I should play basics at all and if so how many and how to tune my sideboard against the meta.

My perception is that I need the basics against the loam shells which are able to repeatedly wasteland this deck and with island and swamp most spells can be played without completely skrewing the stability of the mana base (although I would love to have an additional fetch).

On the other hand the SB slots are very pressured because I need at least 3 answers for decks that go wide against me (most notably elfs) and additionally enough hate for combo strategies (reanimator/storm/infect ect.) which leaves little to no room for dedicated cards that can be brought in in fair matchups (that is why I opt for the 4th thoughtseize over the 4th force of will for instance).

Besides that I do have problems with explosive Eldrazi starts although I am on true name + goyf + stoneforge. Any first hand experience for this matchup?

What sideboard plan are you currently on generally?

Philip

ps.: Do you have a link to this DelverBlade build you talked about or at least a rough sketch of the deck?

Neo900

11-28-2016, 09:04 AM

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161128/89e34e64c63e186714ff84136887c3a9.jpg
This is the played list. I thought about delver before I went to prague but I wanted to play a deck which I can play on my best.
I play 2 basics a swamp and an island. The day before I put a Hydroblast against Blood moon in the sideboard.

ThE_jOkEr

11-28-2016, 09:32 AM

Thanks :)

davide

11-29-2016, 09:01 AM

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161128/89e34e64c63e186714ff84136887c3a9.jpg
This is the played list. I thought about delver before I went to prague but I wanted to play a deck which I can play on my best.
I play 2 basics a swamp and an island. The day before I put a Hydroblast against Blood moon in the sideboard.

i like this list... i think that is the correct way for deathblade in this meta ...

just one thing, i'm not sure about the idea to play delver with swords...

Neo900

11-29-2016, 09:36 AM

Swords is your best removal you an get. The list is okay, no question and he reached top8. But I don't like the idea of playing Daze and having expensive cards like batterskull. or the fact that you want to be tempo and playing swords. other delver decks can do it better I guesse but this is a nice hybrid.
I will try a delver list also the next weeks. Otherwise I want to build Deathblade on another way with cheaper cards. I guess slower cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Engineered Explosives, Council's Judgment are too slow right now. I think Liliana is so strong and hits the decks like combo and control. Cheap counter, maybe ponder or even Daze (With the right manabase) can help in this metagame.

davide

11-29-2016, 10:04 AM

Swords is your best removal you an get. The list is okay, no question and he reached top8. But I don't like the idea of playing Daze and having expensive cards like batterskull. or the fact that you want to be tempo and playing swords. other delver decks can do it better I guesse but this is a nice hybrid.
I will try a delver list also the next weeks. Otherwise I want to build Deathblade on another way with cheaper cards. I guess slower cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Engineered Explosives, Council's Judgment are too slow right now. I think Liliana is so strong and hits the decks like combo and control. Cheap counter, maybe ponder or even Daze (With the right manabase) can help in this metagame.

the problem for deatrhblade in my opinion is the mana base... eldrazy, grixis, turbo dephts... i don't like the idea to have a lot of bombs that i can't play for my 4 colors mana base ...

about the delver list maybe i would find a place for a basic land (the player said that he needed the second lingering on sideboard) cutting a tropical island ... swords and decay are pretty good against others delver deck

Neo900

11-29-2016, 10:29 AM

I am working on a list with more cantrip and without that high cost cards like jace, Judgment and explosives. All are great but too slow. also baleful strix is great but very controlish. Playing a extra discard spell so I have 4, 2 ponder and 1 spell pierce could be my way. Dropping one of my threats and using cantrip and discard to disrupt the opponent

ClimbGneiss

11-29-2016, 11:39 AM

I am working on a list with more cantrip and without that high cost cards like jace, Judgment and explosives. All are great but too slow. also baleful strix is great but very controlish. Playing a extra discard spell so I have 4, 2 ponder and 1 spell pierce could be my way. Dropping one of my threats and using cantrip and discard to disrupt the opponent

In this vein, Neo, this is why I was advocating my previous list:
For reference :

If you recall, the last time I posted my list I had one less Underground Sea, one less Dimir Charm, and I had +1 Lingering Souls, Mana Leak, Diabolic Edict . I think any committed Deathblade player knows that the biggest downfall of the deck is the mana base. I think that we need to absolutely minimize the green portion of the deck. If it wasn't for the benefits of green for DRS I'd remove it completely. But, considering it makes dredge a good matchup and br reanimator more even, it is necessary. The two green cards that I think are worth playing are Gaddock Teeg and Leovold, Emissary of Trest. I have a lot of experience with Gaddock Teeg, its quite good against miracles and storm. I have literally zero experience with Leovold, but the Bant Blade folk are ranting and raving about how much they love Leovold.

Just to quickly summarize what I'm getting at:
cards like Baleful Strix and Abrupt Decay really lead us down these paths where we have to commit to fetching certain lands. It really hurts a lot of our delver, midrange matchups and it also significantly hurts our matchups vs th fringy Blood moon decks.

Neo900

11-29-2016, 04:04 PM

I played today a Delver list and it was awful. Playing Wasteland, Daze and Stoneforge are so anti combo. Playing swords to plowshares is like a time walk. Attacking and attacking with the delver and then giving the opponent life back.
I would move Jace to the Sideboard maybe against important match ups. Otherwise as described.
To the green splash: It can be really back breaking but having decays is a strong weapon and can hit a blood moon if you pull the mana into your pool.

ClimbGneiss

11-29-2016, 04:10 PM

Would you all agree that the worst matchup for this deck is shardless? I have a very good matchup win % vs Miracles, something like 15 match wins v 2 match losses. Whereas versus shardless my match record is something like 1 match win v 5 match losses.

Pre board, I'm not 100 percent sure how our deck on am average draw beats their average draw?
If I had to draw I up, it would go DRS> TNN > SFM Grabbing sofai or Batterskull. You'd have to avoid Toxic deluge and well timed Abrupt decays. I assume I they had a hand that was reliant on an ancestral resolving down the line, you could go aggro versus that.

Post board, I like Lingering Souls, I like Meddling Mage and Pithing Needles (although both of those are not perfect answers). I like Sactum Prelate on 3.

Does anyone else have any ideas? I see a lot of people suggesting Bitterblossom which I am not the hugest fan of versus Shardless.

Vandalize

11-29-2016, 04:49 PM

I think this deck shouldn't run basics. 4 colors is reason enough for that. Sometimes you'll lose to Blood Moon, but I guess that's a worthy risk.

List has been running fine. Playing 4 Ponders allow me to fix my mana ASAP and dig for threats when necessary. Painful Truths is awesome in long games, and plays well with Snapcaster Mage. I play Cabal Therapy instead of Thoughtseize because I don't own any seizes and I'm pretty good at blind hits against certain decks.

ClimbGneiss

11-29-2016, 07:12 PM

I think this deck shouldn't run basics. 4 colors is reason enough for that. Sometimes you'll lose to Blood Moon, but I guess that's a worthy risk.

List has been running fine. Playing 4 Ponders allow me to fix my mana ASAP and dig for threats when necessary. Painful Truths is awesome in long games, and plays well with Snapcaster Mage. I play Cabal Therapy instead of Thoughtseize because I don't own any seizes and I'm pretty good at blind hits against certain decks.

Maybe, in your meta, you don't get punished. However, in larger tournament settings and in my strong meta, there's a couple of blood moons, a lot of wastelands in delver and midrange, and several of the strongest lands players I know. The basics have made their way through the full midrange meta of my LGS. It's strong, it allows to you nearly guarantee certain lines of play in your first few turns. If venture to say that, as the deathblade player, if we win the first few turns, we typically win the match (except against shardless and miracles).

The big takeaway that I've found is that:
A) Abrupt decay is unnecessary, and
B) I have plenty of removal between stp, snap swords, single Vindicate, tnn wall, lilly, Jitte and SOFAI.

As a side note on B), using your removal and counters correctly is very important. It requires intimate knowledge of most decks that get played regularly. And I would say that its even more important for Deathblade pilots to be the knowledgeable player in a matchup. You need to know when to jam a threat, when to save your stp, when to fetch for Jitte versys SOFAI, etc.

Just my two cents on the matter.:smile:

Neo900

11-30-2016, 03:22 AM

I would say our biggest weaknesses are A) Shardless BUG B) Blood Moon C) Punishing fire D) Wasteland
Against Wasteland we have one or two basics paired with Deathrite Shaman.
Fire is tricky. Good sequencing allows us to eat the Fire with our Shaman. In the Sideboard we have grave hate and Surgical Extraction is great.
Blood Moon is hard but we can win. Also basics win or we counter it. Swamp allows us to play Deathrite Shaman and fix mana. Island allows us to play cantrips and search answers. Plains allows us to play Stoneforge Mystic. Since Prague I play a Hydroblast against Blood Moon.
Shardless BUG is very hard. On the play it's easier. Force is bad. It trades 2:1 and is exactly what they want. Cheap counter like Invasive Surgery help me out. Leovold is great in this match up. Card and board advantage is helpful. Gideon, SoFaI, Jace. They are a control deck.

davide

11-30-2016, 07:20 AM

Wasteland, blood moon and shardless... The meta right now ahahah

And there's death and taxes with rishadan port

Think that deathblade needs to change a lot

Neo900

11-30-2016, 08:03 AM

Death and Taxes is slow with their mana denial and most of the times I am able to stabilize and hit them with the Nemesis. I wouldn't consider Death and Taxes as a bad matchup.
Elves, Miracles, Grixis/Burg delver, Death and Taxes are all matchups which are clear winnable.
Deathblade is flexible and can react to the most things quite well.

ClimbGneiss

11-30-2016, 04:32 PM

Wasteland, blood moon and shardless... The meta right now ahahah

And there's death and taxes with rishadan port

Think that deathblade needs to change a lot

I agree 100 percent with Neo on this. Tnn all day. And, if you trick your opponent with brainstorms and equipment, you can get them to name the wrong equipment and equipment the one you were hiding. I'm a big fan of SOFAI against grindy decks because drawing extra cards helps find answers. Obviously Jitte is the best in that matchup.

ClimbGneiss

11-30-2016, 04:36 PM

I would say our biggest weaknesses are A) Shardless BUG B) Blood Moon C) Punishing fire D) Wasteland
Against Wasteland we have one or two basics paired with Deathrite Shaman.
Fire is tricky. Good sequencing allows us to eat the Fire with our Shaman. In the Sideboard we have grave hate and Surgical Extraction is great.
Blood Moon is hard but we can win. Also basics win or we counter it. Swamp allows us to play Deathrite Shaman and fix mana. Island allows us to play cantrips and search answers. Plains allows us to play Stoneforge Mystic. Since Prague I play a Hydroblast against Blood Moon.
Shardless BUG is very hard. On the play it's easier. Force is bad. It trades 2:1 and is exactly what they want. Cheap counter like Invasive Surgery help me out. Leovold is great in this match up. Card and board advantage is helpful. Gideon, SoFaI, Jace. They are a control deck.

Punishing Fire and Chalice of the Void are pretty painful. I went to one larger tournament and got trounced by aggro loam in concurrent rounds.

Like you said, versus Blood moon, a fetch for a Plains usually wins the game (for sfm getting sofai against moggcatcher stompy).

Shardless, my best cards have typically been Sorin lord of innistrad and lingering Souls. Invasive surgery seems interesting. Using it on a hymn or ancestral would be very nice. It certainly is the hardest deck that we frequently encounter. If I ever figure out a play pattern that routinely gets me there, I'll share it on here. As it is, I've found something that works really well versus miracles and it feels like I should be happy I've made it that far, because miracles is, what, 20 percent of the meta?

ClimbGneiss

11-30-2016, 05:32 PM

I would say our biggest weaknesses are A) Shardless BUG B) Blood Moon C) Punishing fire D) Wasteland
Against Wasteland we have one or two basics paired with Deathrite Shaman.
Fire is tricky. Good sequencing allows us to eat the Fire with our Shaman. In the Sideboard we have grave hate and Surgical Extraction is great.
Blood Moon is hard but we can win. Also basics win or we counter it. Swamp allows us to play Deathrite Shaman and fix mana. Island allows us to play cantrips and search answers. Plains allows us to play Stoneforge Mystic. Since Prague I play a Hydroblast against Blood Moon.
Shardless BUG is very hard. On the play it's easier. Force is bad. It trades 2:1 and is exactly what they want. Cheap counter like Invasive Surgery help me out. Leovold is great in this match up. Card and board advantage is helpful. Gideon, SoFaI, Jace. They are a control deck.

What are your thoughts on a sideboard Misdirection? Is there enough utility there against other matchups besides Shardless? Certainly, against shardless, it's got the potential to be pretty good. Is divert adequate? Seems like it could be better when used aggressively.

Note that there is an extra card in the main deck and 17 cards in the sideboard.
The items I'd like to discuss:
- Which card gets removed for the 61st card, Leovold?k vs
- What are two best choices for green sources? I chose Tropical and Bayou. I think Tropical is correct, but I don't know about Bayou.
- Is Dimir Charm worth the difficult mana cost? Would a Diabolic Edict or Mana Leak be better?
- In the sideboard, Divert feels really good versus Discard from Storm, Shardless, and removal in fair matchups. Does Flusterstorm get cut?
- I put a 2nd Leovold in the sideboard because I project it to be an excellent answer to many of our problems.(Punishing Fire, Wasteland, etc.) Perhaps, teeg or prelate aren't good enough. My only reason for prelate would be vs shardless (naming 3) and miracles (naming whatever Meddling doesn't hit).

I'd love everyone's input. I think a couple of tweaks to even up the shardless matchup could really improve the whole matchup.

Note that there is an extra card in the main deck and 17 cards in the sideboard.
The items I'd like to discuss:
- Which card gets removed for the 61st card, Leovold?k vs
- What are two best choices for green sources? I chose Tropical and Bayou. I think Tropical is correct, but I don't know about Bayou.
- Is Dimir Charm worth the difficult mana cost? Would a Diabolic Edict or Mana Leak be better?
- In the sideboard, Divert feels really good versus Discard from Storm, Shardless, and removal in fair matchups. Does Flusterstorm get cut?
- I put a 2nd Leovold in the sideboard because I project it to be an excellent answer to many of our problems.(Punishing Fire, Wasteland, etc.) Perhaps, teeg or prelate aren't good enough. My only reason for prelate would be vs shardless (naming 3) and miracles (naming whatever Meddling doesn't hit).

I'd love everyone's input. I think a couple of tweaks to even up the shardless matchup could really improve the whole matchup.

I would cut Liliana, Leovald, or Dimir Charm. Probably Lili if it were me. I like Ponder in conjunction with all the shuffle effects, maybe add another one and cut Dimir Charm or a Snapcaster?

I would also try to fit a couple Abrupt Decays in the board for Miracles, which would lend toward fitting in a Savannah rather than Bayou. I also think Savannah makes Leovald slightly easier to cast. Maybe cut Lingering Souls for Abrupt Decay?

I like the list...good luck.

Neo900

12-01-2016, 05:13 AM

Leovold is so strong. It makes all bad matchups better. Against DnT, BUG, AggroLoam.
In Prague I played against Maverick and all he had is a Birds of Paradise with Sword of Fire and Ice and I was able to draw so many cards with Leo.
I played Divert a long time in my Sideboard. It helps against Loam as well.
Right now I would cut Jace. He is a great Planeswalker but the meta is too aggressive. Most of the times I force my opponent into top deck with Liliana and Thoughtseize while I have a thread like Bitterblossom or Nemesis or I am simply better in top decking. I thought about Hymn again to reach this situation earlier.

Your list is okay so far. In your list a Savannah would be better since you focus more on white and stoneforge. Gaddock Teeg is questionable. Blocks your Batterskull, Jace and Force.

ClimbGneiss

12-01-2016, 02:33 PM

Leovold is so strong. It makes all bad matchups better. Against DnT, BUG, AggroLoam.
In Prague I played against Maverick and all he had is a Birds of Paradise with Sword of Fire and Ice and I was able to draw so many cards with Leo.
I played Divert a long time in my Sideboard. It helps against Loam as well.
Right now I would cut Jace. He is a great Planeswalker but the meta is too aggressive. Most of the times I force my opponent into top deck with Liliana and Thoughtseize while I have a thread like Bitterblossom or Nemesis or I am simply better in top decking. I thought about Hymn again to reach this situation earlier.

Your list is okay so far. In your list a Savannah would be better since you focus more on white and stoneforge. Gaddock Teeg is questionable. Blocks your Batterskull, Jace and Force.

Thanks. That's a good point about Teeg. Teeg seems an easy first removal. I'm tempted to run only one green source and keep my mana base the way that was previously (1 tropical, 3 uSea vs 1 trop, 2 usea, 1 other green source). If I am only running the 2 Leo (1 main, 1 side) is the single green source adequate? I would assume that I would sandbag the source until I needed it or would rely on a drs.

Neo900

12-02-2016, 03:08 AM

It depends on the match up. against Miracles you can fetch on green ASAP because they don't have wasteland. Most of the times my opponent wants to cut me off of white, rare times off black.
If green sun's Zenith is a problem, you can play grafdiggers cage. the only it hurts is your own snapcaster mage.

-didn't miss JACE, cards too slow for this meta...
-bitterblossom great card against BUG and control, thinking to add another on sideboard

- the change that i'll make will be - 3 strix (didn't like too mucth) for + 2 snapcatser mage + 1 equip, sword of fire/ice or feast and famine 8for having a better MU against shardless)

MEWTU

12-03-2016, 01:23 AM

My "team" and I (just two friends haha) decided to play Deathblade at Vegas next year, so we've been putting in some testing with the list. Played and won a small 8 man tournament tonight with the following list:

So as of now we are basically all in on the yolo no-basics plan, definitely plan on testing a couple basics though -- either without Decay, or I think this list could support like -1 Wasteland -1 of the non island Fetches, +2 basics possibly. But Decay has been an allstar for me so don't really want to cut it.

My sideboard was kinda janky, I got there late and didn't have the time or means to mess with it, so definitely not what I would ideally run. The metagame was unknown for me and was pretty wild -- myself and my buddy running the same 60 (he had the better sideboard, don't remember exactly what) and one Grixis Delver, then Doomsday(!), Lands, 4C Loam, Dredge, and Aluren.

Round 1 I played vs Aluren, I did at least know what this guy would be on as we've played a few times before (never this particular matchup though)

Game 1: He gets a quick Aluren, I have no Force backup and get comboed out.
Game 2: I'm able to get there with TNN beatdown, constricting his mana a bit and able to Force his Aluren
Game 3: Super long and grindy game, I get a Canonist down plus Needle on Harpy, he resolves an Aluren but can't use it effectively while I'm beating down with 2x TNNs. He Intuitions for Abrupt Decay, I had cast a spell that turn so on his upkeep I Surgical them and he flashes in an Eternal Witness to save, but can't cast a spell until my turn. He decays my Canonist but isn't able to do anything with a pretty empty hand, draws Brainstorm but doesn't find anything and dies to my TNNs. He mentioned sideboarding out Reclamation Sage being a mistake (seems like you leave that against Stoneforge Mystic..), so probably shouldn't have won this one.

1-0

Round 2 I played vs 4C Loam which I think is a pretty bad matchup.

Game 1 on the play I get a quick DRS->Lingering Souls->Flashback and beat him down with Spirits before he's able to stabilize -- probably needed one or two more turns to make a 20/20.

Game 2 he plays a Wasteland so I Waste it. He plays a tapped green cycling land so I waste it. He plays another Wasteland so I play the second Underground Sea with Spell Snare and Brainstorm up, thinking if he Wastes it I probably Brainstorm in response and don't feel *terrible* about it, but that it's pretty likely he'll keep the Wasteland to try to Chalice or Bob. He goes for Bob and I get him with the Spell Snare. I thoughtseize with a Surgical in hand and see Decay, Scooze, PFire and lands (including Grove), but he's a little constricted on red mana and I have Leo in hand, so I take Decay thinking Fire doesn't finish off Leo in one go and I can probably manage to Surgical the Fires in response to a trigger. Of course he topdecks Chalice so I surgical the Abrupt Decays while I can at least do something, look through his deck and note the 1x Choke sideboard tech -- didn't need to remember for long as he rips the Choke off the top and that was that -- drew a Decay a few turns later but not the means to cast it and was already getting beat down by a Scooze + huge Knight.

Game 3 he mulligans into a pretty slow hand, he has Chalice but I have Decay for it and am eventually able to resolve a Jace -- he's a bit tight on mana and plays a Pridemage and tapped GW Manland, so I Liliana tick down (knowing it will eat a P Fire but he has no Grove) and Waste the manland. He takes care of Lili but I get a Leovold online start hitting him for 3 while ticking up Jace on him (spending a couple turns Brainstorming in between). I'm able to keep him off anything relevant, he eventually finds a Karakas but it's not very good vs Leovold. I Jace ulti him for the win. Tight match but that game I never felt not in the driver's seat, would've taken a lot for him to stabilize.

2-0

Next I sit down with my finals opponent and he remarks that the matchup is pretty bad for him so I hope Delver. Sure enough I see a turn 1 Delver and feel great. Game 1 I guess he has zero permission and I just draw triple Swords and Sword Delver, Young Pyro, Young Pyro. He's never really able to come back from that and I slowly beat him down with a TNN after he Therapies my Batterskull. Game 2 I draw a super gas hand, my board state when I won was 2x SFM, DRS, both equipment and TNN. I made a slight mistake one turn equipping a Strix with Jitte and attacking with that plus a Germ into flipped Delver + Angler. My thought was that he couldn't really block due to Jitte counters, but I get blown out by Bolt on Strix + block on Germ, which was one of his two cards. It didn't really matter since my plan was to immediately drop TNN and suit up next turn anyway, but I could've got some more value off Jitte and I was far enough ahead that I should've just avoided any potential for him to get back into the game with a big mistake like that. I ended the game a couple turns later by double Abrupt Decaying his two Delvers and attacking with the team with an unused Lingering Souls still in my hand.

My buddy went 2-1, losing to Doomsday in round 1 (he said he had the win but punted, but I was too busy with my Aluren match to watch closely) and beat Lands and 4C Loam.

All in all we love the deck, it feels very skill testing to play and almost similar to Jund in Modern in that it attacks from all angles and has some difficult to deal with threats. We definitely want to try swapping out for some Basic Lands (though I've loved Abrupt Decay) and I want to test out Bitterblossom as well and probably 1 less Jace (would've tonight but I didn't have time to get it together)

Cheers! Just decided to register here to post this haha, get a lot of great insight from this thread so I'll definitely be popping in here and there to read about the latest thoughts.

Neo900

12-03-2016, 03:56 AM

Congrats for your win.
your list seems solid. I wonder why you play only 2 Thoughtseize. I think hand disruption is an important strategy in various situations and the first turns. with Deathrite and Thoughtseize in my start hand against a Mulligan I start always with Thoughtseize.
What does Sorin Solmn Visitor for you instead of other Planeswalker ?
Our Planeswalker have to do one job which is either board or card advantage.
Liliana and Jace are the best and strongest Planeswalker we can play. I can understand if you feel unsafe with Elspeth or Gideon with double white or Garruk Relentless with green.
We want to bring those Planeswalker mainly against control. Sorin sv can produces token as -2 ability so he can't produce every turn a vampire. the +1 helps only with a good board situation. His ultimate is not good against control match ups since they don't have any creatures.
If you need him for the lifelink, think about Basilisks Collar. Against eldrazi or other aggro it's quite interesting. A deathtouch Batterskull or Nemesis is quite strong.

MEWTU

12-03-2016, 12:50 PM

Congrats for your win.
your list seems solid. I wonder why you play only 2 Thoughtseize. I think hand disruption is an important strategy in various situations and the first turns. with Deathrite and Thoughtseize in my start hand against a Mulligan I start always with Thoughtseize.
What does Sorin Solmn Visitor for you instead of other Planeswalker ?
Our Planeswalker have to do one job which is either board or card advantage.
Liliana and Jace are the best and strongest Planeswalker we can play. I can understand if you feel unsafe with Elspeth or Gideon with double white or Garruk Relentless with green.
We want to bring those Planeswalker mainly against control. Sorin sv can produces token as -2 ability so he can't produce every turn a vampire. the +1 helps only with a good board situation. His ultimate is not good against control match ups since they don't have any creatures.
If you need him for the lifelink, think about Basilisks Collar. Against eldrazi or other aggro it's quite interesting. A deathtouch Batterskull or Nemesis is quite strong.

I agree, I would definitely like a third Thoughtseize in the maindeck. Sorin was definitely a mistake, the sideboard wasn't optimal but I didn't have a chance to swap it -- it should be a Garruk (or maybe a second Lili, not sure), that's what we're running on mtgo. It didn't really matter for the matchups I played though, at least.

Basilisk's Collar is a pretty interesting idea..

Neo900

12-03-2016, 01:24 PM

I had Garruk in the Sideboard then swaped to gideon, ally of zendikar.
I didn't like the fact that Garruk forces me to fetch on green. But Garruk is the most flexible Planeswalker we can play. If he flips he can kill with his -3. I olay 2 Liliana main and no Jace. Right now he is too slow in an aggressive meta.
Baleful Strix is an okay meta call bit seems a bit fragile.

ClimbGneiss

12-07-2016, 11:49 AM

Played a 5 round weekly at my LGS.
Played my most recent list I've been proposing (Dimir charm, still has jace tms because im waiting for 2x leovold, a basic of each esper type).

Anyway, I went 3-1-1 for 3rd/4th place store credit. Given a normal set of reasonable matchups, death blade does deliver this result frequently.

Rd 1 vs Grixis Tempo (1-1-1 drew because of time).
Grixis Tempo was not playing young pyromancer. They were on 3 tnn, 2-3 Snapcaster mage, bolts, decays, delvers, drs, no goyf.
We went to time. I take time at critical junctures but will play very swiftly otherwise. I've been playing with the deck long enough to know when to just play, attack and pass. My opponent was very deliberate, and played very tight. I feel confident that we went to time because of him. I harbor no ill will because it was a good match and we were at a casual weekly event, so it's a good place for a person to learn.
G1, he beat me on the back of an early true name and removal and counters on my threats.
G2, I won strongly off the back of an early tnn equipped with sofai.
G3, grindy and with little time, we finished with him having a tnn and me having a drs and plenty of gy fodder to stall his clock. I had three cards in hand including batterskull, and several match breaking cards to draw. His best draw would have been liliana, but I don't think he runs that card.

Match 2 vs 12 post LOSS IN 3
G1, opponent played cloudpost, cloudpost, vesuva, emrakul the promised end. I used some permission on Her various pieces along the way (candelabra, top, map) but she was drawing post lands. Not much to do.

G2, I won off the back off a few well timed top decks vs some bad top decks. After our first few turns, I had a few creatures and a Liliana on board. I made a critical error and named emrakul the promised end with Meddling made and she thumped down an ugin and wiped my board. I top decked two wastelands and a Vindicate and got out of being ultimated at 2 life. Drew tnn and sfm into sofai for the win.

G3, she drew post lands and Pithing needles and played old school emrakul with a Karakas in play.

12 post feels very hard to win...

Match 3 vs TES (WIN in 3)
G1, he plays out Mire and Delta and I call him on combo. I play put drs and sfm and then jace. Over 3 turns jace brainstorms me nothing and he combos off.

G2, I do work with my 10 sideboard inclusions.

G3, same as g2.

Match 4 vs DNT (win in 2)
This match should be bad. This particular player knows me and knows blade decks well. Hates TNN and main decks several answers to Jitte
G1, early Jitte and tnn with 5 lands in my hand. Used both wastelands and just kept attacking with tnn and triggering jitte. More stuff happens but nothing remarkable.
G2, I get the luckiest hand. I draw all 4 Swords and a Snapcaster to boot. I also cast a jitte and some other creature.

Round 5 vs Belcher (win in 3)
G1, he goes off turn 1 after I mull to 6 looking for a counter. I wasn't sure if he was on storm or Belcher, I just knew he was on combo. He creates 10 goblins and then casts goblin war strike.

G2, I have 2 force of will in hand and 2 Blue cards.

G3, see g2.

3-1-1. Very possible that I could have gone to 4-1 had I won round 1.

With deathblade at my weeklies against a strong player base, my match win percentage has been approx 60 to 65 percent. Lately it's been tailing off (it started at something closer to 85 percent over the first 2 months). With more Jund, Aggro Loam and Maverick showing up, it's been difficult navigating my way through these decks.

I'm trying a sideboard atraxa for these Abrupt decay matchups. I will also be trying 2 leovolds in the 75, removing the jaces.

Maybe, in your meta, you don't get punished. However, in larger tournament settings and in my strong meta, there's a couple of blood moons, a lot of wastelands in delver and midrange, and several of the strongest lands players I know. The basics have made their way through the full midrange meta of my LGS. It's strong, it allows to you nearly guarantee certain lines of play in your first few turns. If venture to say that, as the deathblade player, if we win the first few turns, we typically win the match (except against shardless and miracles).

The big takeaway that I've found is that:
A) Abrupt decay is unnecessary, and
B) I have plenty of removal between stp, snap swords, single Vindicate, tnn wall, lilly, Jitte and SOFAI.

As a side note on B), using your removal and counters correctly is very important. It requires intimate knowledge of most decks that get played regularly. And I would say that its even more important for Deathblade pilots to be the knowledgeable player in a matchup. You need to know when to jam a threat, when to save your stp, when to fetch for Jitte versys SOFAI, etc.

Just my two cents on the matter.:smile:

How does this deck beat elves.....?

ClimbGneiss

12-07-2016, 02:22 PM

How does this deck beat elves.....?

Deathblade, in general, or my version? I ask because you responded to my posting.

Regardless, we have good interactions wIth their deck. Step 1 is to draw your hand and analyze it and see how it interacts with various types of elves draws.
The next step is to make sure not to be TOO overactive in answering every threat. Obviously, there are a few elves which are better than others, and your timing with how you interact with them is extremely important.
Wirework symbiote is a must-answer because it protects other elves.
Deathrite Shaman can be very dangerous and it interacts with your Deathrite Shaman and Snapcaster Mage.
Finally, Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel are obviously the beginning parts of a combo, Heritage Druid should be answered.

In many prominent examples of defeating elves with blade decks, the blade player turns the corner and makes sure to keep the board 100 percent clear. On the play, it is much easier to perform this plan. On the draw, it can be much more difficult and it requires you to play very tight. For example, with Force backup, I'd be very tempted to Thoughtseize first to see what I'm working against, take the most explosive piece and to game plan against the worst case scenerio, then use your sfm and tnn to create a board presence.

Post board, I really dislike Planeswalkers. I like Force of will. I like Zealous Persecution and Engineered Plague. I like Meddling Mage. Leovold shuts down whole lines of play.

An examole game could be:
On the play.
Play drs, pass.
Plays 1 mana elf, pass
T2, cast thoughtseize:
- if you see the nuts, hold up your mana and interact.
- If you see something average, cast Stoneforge mystic. If you don't have Mystic and the first creature they played was drs, hold up your Shaman to block their activations.

T3, you can start easily casting brainstorms and finding more interactions. Hopefully you find a sfm for jitte. Snapcaster Mage to target Swords in your yard.

You can let certain creatures lives depending on your hand and their hand. Also, use your life total as a resource (you may find yourself in a situation where you've prevented them from comboing off but they are swinging for 4 per turn ).

Deathblade, in general, or my version? I ask because you responded to my posting.

Regardless, we have good interactions wIth their deck. Step 1 is to draw your hand and analyze it and see how it interacts with various types of elves draws.
The next step is to make sure not to be TOO overactive in answering every threat. Obviously, there are a few elves which are better than others, and your timing with how you interact with them is extremely important.
Wirework symbiote is a must-answer because it protects other elves.
Deathrite Shaman can be very dangerous and it interacts with your Deathrite Shaman and Snapcaster Mage.
Finally, Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel are obviously the beginning parts of a combo, Heritage Druid should be answered.

In many prominent examples of defeating elves with blade decks, the blade player turns the corner and makes sure to keep the board 100 percent clear. On the play, it is much easier to perform this plan. On the draw, it can be much more difficult and it requires you to play very tight. For example, with Force backup, I'd be very tempted to Thoughtseize first to see what I'm working against, take the most explosive piece and to game plan against the worst case scenerio, then use your sfm and tnn to create a board presence.

Post board, I really dislike Planeswalkers. I like Force of will. I like Zealous Persecution and Engineered Plague. I like Meddling Mage. Leovold shuts down whole lines of play.

An examole game could be:
On the play.
Play drs, pass.
Plays 1 mana elf, pass
T2, cast thoughtseize:
- if you see the nuts, hold up your mana and interact.
- If you see something average, cast Stoneforge mystic. If you don't have Mystic and the first creature they played was drs, hold up your Shaman to block their activations.

T3, you can start easily casting brainstorms and finding more interactions. Hopefully you find a sfm for jitte. Snapcaster Mage to target Swords in your yard.

You can let certain creatures lives depending on your hand and their hand. Also, use your life total as a resource (you may find yourself in a situation where you've prevented them from comboing off but they are swinging for 4 per turn ).

Hmmm, I have been playing elves and stoneblade since caw blade and elves seems to be favored 70>30. I think thats because of chaos elves though. Elves also plays leovold and jitte though cannot seach for jitte as reliably but rec sage , recks my stoneblade deck through caverns and bounce.

that said, stoneblade decks are so much fun to play it doesnt matter

ClimbGneiss

12-07-2016, 06:31 PM

Hmmm, I have been playing elves and stoneblade since caw blade and elves seems to be favored 70>30. I think thats because of chaos elves though. Elves also plays leovold and jitte though cannot seach for jitte as reliably but rec sage , recks my stoneblade deck through caverns and bounce.

that said, stoneblade decks are so much fun to play it doesnt matter

I hear you. I'm not claiming for it to be overwhelming, I just think I've found a good game plan. I mean, the nice thing about elves is that it can rebuild so quickly /win so quickly; however, deathblade literally is built upon the premise of having decent game against everything and many of its cards interact favorably with deathblade.

First_Revenge

12-07-2016, 07:19 PM

Hey guys, figured Iíd post this list up finally, Iíve been playing deathblade for a while now and been tinkering with the list as I went along, this is what I currently play and Iím reasonably happy with. Iíve put up reasonable results with it at local weekly games. Iím admittedly not the best pilot, so Iíve likely left quite a few wins on the table.

Yes, I know the list is 61 cards. But I couldnít figure out what to cut .

Maindeck:
I feel the main deck is pretty standard, not many curveballs here. I do run basics as my meta currently seems to be teeming with blood moons and wastelands. Generally I also prefer just having a more stable mana base, so itís not as greedy as other lists Iíve seen on here. The lone tropical island is really only in here for reanimator or miracles. Otherwise itís a 3rd nonbasic island.
Iíve been seeing some dimir charm and painful truths in lists recently but I do think that esper charm is more flexible/better than either of these cards. End step drawing 2 or making an opponent discard 2 feels very good, and itís also somewhat of answer to miracles as 3 is a relatively difficult number for them to come up with. In the miracles matchup I view this as half an abrupt decay.

Iíd like to add a deluge maindeck and maybe one more counterspell or a snapcaster mage. Finding the space is difficult though. I also want to experiment with monastery mentor as well, perhaps I will end up cutting a TNN for it.
Just curious though, is the 23 land count too high? A lot of blade lists I see run as few as 21, with most at 22. Might be able to make space that way.

Sideboard:
Most of my sideboard feels pretty vanilla, I donít feel like Iím making any waves here. Except for the thopter foundry combo.
I have a mild transformational sideboard into a thopter foundry combo. While Iíve gone back and forth on its inclusion I do like it and Iíll walk through my rationale because itís probably the most interesting piece of tech in the deck.

Start with the bad. For starters it takes up 1/3 of my sideboard slots. Because itís an artifact/equipment based strategy, itís likely going to be impacted by the natural sideboard choices against the maindeck deathblade list. Itís also a relatively slow combo to set up, but we are naturally a slower deck and deathrites can help get this out a bit earlier.

The good, it flat out wins grindy games. Typically I yank 4 FoW and in goes the Thopter combo. In grindy games the combo is good if you have it in your early hand and just try to stick it immediately. Itís also good if you find it late game with 5-6 mana and you can immediately turn it on. Also, itís almost always a G2 surprise and catches opponents off guard. Iíve won miracles matchups with this combo as it makes terminus way worse. On a more marginal note, as long as I have a basic island/plains up, I no longer care about blood moons anymore. The combo runs on colorless mana.

You can run less land. I play 21 lands like forever (and 61 cards).
when do you want to board thopter combo in ?
as you mentioned the hate hits it as well. other token machines work as well.
with 4 Stoneforge Mystic you wan to run 3 equipments as well. with only 2 you forces you into situations where the Mystic is only a 1/2 useless. Sword of Fire and ice, Sword of feast and famine are common choices.
my feeling about mentor is that he can be answered too easy. Punishing fire, decay, swords to plow.
If you want creatures think about something with delve like tasigur or gurmag angler.
All in all you are a control heavy list which is okay if your meta allows it.
without thopter foundry in your board you have 5 slots more for counter magic, pithing needle etc.

ClimbGneiss

12-08-2016, 09:31 AM

Hey guys, figured Iíd post this list up finally, Iíve been playing deathblade for a while now and been tinkering with the list as I went along, this is what I currently play and Iím reasonably happy with. Iíve put up reasonable results with it at local weekly games. Iím admittedly not the best pilot, so Iíve likely left quite a few wins on the table.

Yes, I know the list is 61 cards. But I couldnít figure out what to cut .

Maindeck:
I feel the main deck is pretty standard, not many curveballs here. I do run basics as my meta currently seems to be teeming with blood moons and wastelands. Generally I also prefer just having a more stable mana base, so itís not as greedy as other lists Iíve seen on here. The lone tropical island is really only in here for reanimator or miracles. Otherwise itís a 3rd nonbasic island.
Iíve been seeing some dimir charm and painful truths in lists recently but I do think that esper charm is more flexible/better than either of these cards. End step drawing 2 or making an opponent discard 2 feels very good, and itís also somewhat of answer to miracles as 3 is a relatively difficult number for them to come up with. In the miracles matchup I view this as half an abrupt decay.

Iíd like to add a deluge maindeck and maybe one more counterspell or a snapcaster mage. Finding the space is difficult though. I also want to experiment with monastery mentor as well, perhaps I will end up cutting a TNN for it.
Just curious though, is the 23 land count too high? A lot of blade lists I see run as few as 21, with most at 22. Might be able to make space that way.

Sideboard:
Most of my sideboard feels pretty vanilla, I donít feel like Iím making any waves here. Except for the thopter foundry combo.
I have a mild transformational sideboard into a thopter foundry combo. While Iíve gone back and forth on its inclusion I do like it and Iíll walk through my rationale because itís probably the most interesting piece of tech in the deck.

Start with the bad. For starters it takes up 1/3 of my sideboard slots. Because itís an artifact/equipment based strategy, itís likely going to be impacted by the natural sideboard choices against the maindeck deathblade list. Itís also a relatively slow combo to set up, but we are naturally a slower deck and deathrites can help get this out a bit earlier.

The good, it flat out wins grindy games. Typically I yank 4 FoW and in goes the Thopter combo. In grindy games the combo is good if you have it in your early hand and just try to stick it immediately. Itís also good if you find it late game with 5-6 mana and you can immediately turn it on. Also, itís almost always a G2 surprise and catches opponents off guard. Iíve won miracles matchups with this combo as it makes terminus way worse. On a more marginal note, as long as I have a basic island/plains up, I no longer care about blood moons anymore. The combo runs on colorless mana.

I agree with Neo re: 4 SFM + 3 equipment. Plus, sword of fire and ice is really my go to equipment in the blind. Drawing extra cards is incredibly valuable in a deck built upon card quality.

Re: land count. Up until recently I was running 61 cards, 20 lands. That was too few, I upped the land count to 21 and the deck number to 60 to up y percentage points approx 3 to 4 percent, I think. 61 cards is totally acceptable. 23 lands is too many in my opinion, though I have friends who don't play deathblade who disagree.

I dislike the thoptor combo in your sideboard. Don't get me wrong, I totally get it. The combo is totally awesome and fun to play; however, your resources are better spent elsewhere. I think the combo is best versus burn, lands, and maybe miracles.

Per the recent discussions regarding removing Jace, the Mind Sculptor because he is too slow, I have added two Leovold, Emissary of Trest to the 75; one in the main, one in the side. I removed the Dimir Charm because of the same reason I don't play Abrupt Decay and Baleful Strix. Because I like to run a plains, swamp and island, there will be situations where you can't quite cast anything on two in mana attrition matchups (vs delver, 4 wasteland versions of shardless, and lands). I recognize that Leovold is one mana of each type at 3 cmc, but I think the upside is too high enough for Leovold that it's worth it and I think it will be easy enough to navigate either with Deathrite Shaman or fetching Island, Swamp and then Tropical Island . In the sideboard, I removed Atraxa, Praetor's Voice , that I never got to cast and wanted to try out versus Abrupt Decay matchups, and put in the 2nd Leovold.

What do you all think? The Diabolic Edict and Mana Leak: Diabolic Edict is the additional piece of removal that we need versus creature heavy matchups. Very good versus Lands and True-Name Nemesis. Mana Leak acts as a more castable Counterspell. In fact, you can trap people quite easily I've done it a half dozen time easily where I have a Scrubland and an open Fetchland and they think that I would only possible have Spell Pierce and I catch them with Mana Leak.

I wish I could fit 2 Lingering Souls into the main deck and not use any in the sideboard, but it's also really good to be selective to bring it in out of the sideboard versus the fair or control matchups.

It feels a little like I'm "betraying" the whole reason I played the deck in the first place (it plays 3 of my favorite cards: DRS, Lilly, and Jace), but Jace is just too slow and often ends up being a 4 mana removal spell or a 4 mana brainstorm. I may end up squeezing it back in for one of Mana Leak or Diabolic Edict.

First_Revenge

12-08-2016, 08:18 PM

Per the recent discussions regarding removing Jace, the Mind Sculptor because he is too slow, I have added two Leovold, Emissary of Trest to the 75; one in the main, one in the side. I removed the Dimir Charm because of the same reason I don't play Abrupt Decay and Baleful Strix. Because I like to run a plains, swamp and island, there will be situations where you can't quite cast anything on two in mana attrition matchups (vs delver, 4 wasteland versions of shardless, and lands). I recognize that Leovold is one mana of each type at 3 cmc, but I think the upside is too high enough for Leovold that it's worth it and I think it will be easy enough to navigate either with Deathrite Shaman or fetching Island, Swamp and then Tropical Island . In the sideboard, I removed Atraxa, Praetor's Voice , that I never got to cast and wanted to try out versus Abrupt Decay matchups, and put in the 2nd Leovold.

What do you all think? The Diabolic Edict and Mana Leak: Diabolic Edict is the additional piece of removal that we need versus creature heavy matchups. Very good versus Lands and True-Name Nemesis. Mana Leak acts as a more castable Counterspell. In fact, you can trap people quite easily I've done it a half dozen time easily where I have a Scrubland and an open Fetchland and they think that I would only possible have Spell Pierce and I catch them with Mana Leak.

I wish I could fit 2 Lingering Souls into the main deck and not use any in the sideboard, but it's also really good to be selective to bring it in out of the sideboard versus the fair or control matchups.

It feels a little like I'm "betraying" the whole reason I played the deck in the first place (it plays 3 of my favorite cards: DRS, Lilly, and Jace), but Jace is just too slow and often ends up being a 4 mana removal spell or a 4 mana brainstorm. I may end up squeezing it back in for one of Mana Leak or Diabolic Edict.

Just curious, i might be asking a stupid question, but why liliana? I never really understood her in deathblade builds since we don't really have cards we can throw away to her +1...? I can see her comboing with lingering souls or something, but a discard synergy doesn't seem to exist here. If anything else she seems like an edict effect which you already run...?

I'd cut her for a jace honestly, but she's one of your fav cards :P

I like the mana leak idea very much. Edict i'm less sold on. You have 4 stp, vindicate, and snapcasters. Might be a bit redundant.

ClimbGneiss

12-08-2016, 08:44 PM

Just curious, i might be asking a stupid question, but why liliana? I never really understood her in deathblade builds since we don't really have cards we can throw away to her +1...? I can see her comboing with lingering souls or something, but a discard synergy doesn't seem to exist here. If anything else she seems like an edict effect which you already run...?

I'd cut her for a jace honestly, but she's one of your fav cards :P

I like the mana leak idea very much. Edict i'm less sold on. You have 4 stp, vindicate, and snapcasters. Might be a bit redundant.

The number 1 reason for Liliana is that she is a matchup breaker with Miracles. Otherwise, I might agree that jace is better considering that it pitches to force. Oh, and also, it also lands on T2 which is pretty great against certain matchups.

Seraphix

12-08-2016, 09:22 PM

Just curious, i might be asking a stupid question, but why liliana? I never really understood her in deathblade builds since we don't really have cards we can throw away to her +1...? I can see her comboing with lingering souls or something, but a discard synergy doesn't seem to exist here. If anything else she seems like an edict effect which you already run...?

I'd cut her for a jace honestly, but she's one of your fav cards :P

I like the mana leak idea very much. Edict i'm less sold on. You have 4 stp, vindicate, and snapcasters. Might be a bit redundant.

4 Plows and a Vindicate is generally not enough spot removal for most creature matchups I found, so I like to have 1-2 extra in the 75. D-Edict is a choice that can be very bad or very good depending on the matchup and board state. It has the benefit of being uniquely effective against fatty decks like Reanimator, Sneak & Show, Lands, and Turbo Depths. ClimbGneiss and I have played this card a decent amount and are both fans.

Regarding Liliana-I agree with a lot of your sentiments about the card. I've already given ClimbGneiss my sermon on how Liliana does not belong in a deck with Brainstorm and Stoneforge Mystic. However, we agreed it affords a great angle of attack against Miracles. Also, the card is so objectively powerful it outright wins games, especially when played on turn 2. But overall the primary motivation to add it is to improve the problematic Miracles matchup.

Neo900

12-09-2016, 12:53 AM

Lilianas -2 is most of the times additional removal. with the discard you force the opponent into the top deck while you have Batterskull or another must answer.
I play 2 liliana and have rare times the problem what to discard. most of the times it's land while having 4 mana up. Also you can discard dead cards like swords to plowshares or counter in a situation where they ineffective

ClimbGneiss

12-09-2016, 12:00 PM

4 Plows and a Vindicate is generally not enough spot removal for most creature matchups I found, so I like to have 1-2 extra in the 75. D-Edict is a choice that can be very bad or very good depending on the matchup and board state. It has the benefit of being uniquely effective against fatty decks like Reanimator, Sneak & Show, Lands, and Turbo Depths. ClimbGneiss and I have played this card a decent amount and are both fans.

Regarding Liliana-I agree with a lot of your sentiments about the card. I've already given ClimbGneiss my sermon on how Liliana does not belong in a deck with Brainstorm and Stoneforge Mystic. However, we agreed it affords a great angle of attack against Miracles. Also, the card is so objectively powerful it outright wins games, especially when played on turn 2. But overall the primary motivation to add it is to improve the problematic Miracles matchup.

I think I might add Jace as card number 61, just to make peace with my soul.

Prdgychild

12-09-2016, 12:46 PM

I think I might add Jace as card number 61, just to make peace with my soul.

The whole reason I play this deck is to relive the turn to SFM, turn 3 B-skull, turn 4 jace. There is nothing more fun than playing a deck that plans on killing with creatures that protect a planeswalker that does it all. I also run the 4 hawks because i am stubborn and believe that the search them out reshuffle them for two new cards is fun and allows me to "play" a lot in a single game.

Playing JTMS proaxtively along side creatures is the reason I play this deck. I would play rug with oracle of muldaya and jace if i did it any other way.

ClimbGneiss

12-09-2016, 01:03 PM

The whole reason I play this deck is to relive the turn to SFM, turn 3 B-skull, turn 4 jace. There is nothing more fun than playing a deck that plans on killing with creatures that protect a planeswalker that does it all. I also run the 4 hawks because i am stubborn and believe that the search them out reshuffle them for two new cards is fun and allows me to "play" a lot in a single game.

Playing JTMS proaxtively along side creatures is the reason I play this deck. I would play rug with oracle of muldaya and jace if i did it any other way.

A friend of mine and Seraphix loves to play Squadron Hawk control. He does quite well with it.

First_Revenge

12-14-2016, 02:38 PM

Okay, so following some of the feedback I got, Iím retooling my sideboard, let me know what you guys think:

So I have some questions about this configuration:
1. I cut Rest in Peace because I felt that it was sort of a non-bo with Deathrite Shaman, it got replaced by Nihil Spellbomb. But I still like RIP because itís such a catchall. Should it have stayed in?
2. How good is Invasive Surgery in reality? It seems super sweet, but how realistic is it to get delirium online to get full value out of it?
3. I view toxic deluge and zealous persecution as sweepers, is two generally enough? I know death and taxes is seeing a lot of play so I want to be ready for that.
4. Is 3 Abrupt Decay excessive? Obviously itís in there for miracles. But I only run one non basic green source so this turns pretty sour if my opponent is running any significant number of non-basic hate.
More of a side note, I was considering the following cards, they are on the bubble, but didnít quite make it. If the SB ends up getting changed again Iíd likely look at these guys first.

Pithing Needle
Divert

Neo900

12-14-2016, 03:25 PM

Pithing Needle is an important Sideboard card. Miracles, Death and Taxes, Goblins, Merfolk, Elves. Nearly every deck get hit by Needle.
3 Decay is too much. 2 are fine. You board it only against Miracles. Your combo hate is strong. I think it's not necessary even in a combo heavy meta.
Delirium with Surgery is not hard. Land, Creature, Instant, Sorcery, Delirium. In about 4 of 5 times I have it when needed against Reanimator.
Spellbomb is super and does the job normally. If you feel unsafe or your meta is too graveyard heavy you can add an additional Rest in Peace.

I play 2 Spellbomb and 1 Surgical Extraction which was always enough so far.
I think about Hymn to Tourarch again in the Maindeck. 2-3 copies instead the 4th Stoneforge and Sword of Fire and Ice.

ClimbGneiss

12-14-2016, 04:39 PM

Okay, so following some of the feedback I got, Iím retooling my sideboard, let me know what you guys think:

So I have some questions about this configuration:
1. I cut Rest in Peace because I felt that it was sort of a non-bo with Deathrite Shaman, it got replaced by Nihil Spellbomb. But I still like RIP because itís such a catchall. Should it have stayed in?
2. How good is Invasive Surgery in reality? It seems super sweet, but how realistic is it to get delirium online to get full value out of it?
3. I view toxic deluge and zealous persecution as sweepers, is two generally enough? I know death and taxes is seeing a lot of play so I want to be ready for that.
4. Is 3 Abrupt Decay excessive? Obviously itís in there for miracles. But I only run one non basic green source so this turns pretty sour if my opponent is running any significant number of non-basic hate.
More of a side note, I was considering the following cards, they are on the bubble, but didnít quite make it. If the SB ends up getting changed again Iíd likely look at these guys first.

Pithing Needle
Divert

I agree with a lot of what neo has to say; however, there are some card choices I'd recommend you consider.

Pithing Needles as a one of. Specifically against miracles and sneak and show, this card is very good for us. It's also useful versus death and taxes.

Meddling made. I run 2. I have a lot lands, reanimator and show and tell and storm in my area. It's a house against these decks. It had decent utility against fair decks too, you just name their primary removal spell and try to dodge board wipes.

I run 2 surgical. I don't run invasive surgery. Surgery is nice because it's proactive in a couple of key situations (versus a Terminus or an Infernal Tutor for example). That being said, Surgical can almost be your 5th and 6th Force of Will against certain combo decks.

I run Sorin lord of innistrad. You can run whatever token generating walker you like the best, but I definitely think you should run 1 because it helps break parity versus miracles and it helps get us closer to even versus shardless, maverick and aggro loam..

I haven't run divert yet, but I've been strongly considering it versus shardless.

I also like additional removal and board wipes because we struggle against swarms.

ClimbGneiss

12-14-2016, 09:17 PM

I agree with a lot of what neo has to say; however, there are some card choices I'd recommend you consider.

Pithing Needles as a one of. Specifically against miracles and sneak and show, this card is very good for us. It's also useful versus death and taxes.

Meddling made. I run 2. I have a lot lands, reanimator and show and tell and storm in my area. It's a house against these decks. It had decent utility against fair decks too, you just name their primary removal spell and try to dodge board wipes.

I run 2 surgical. I don't run invasive surgery. Surgery is nice because it's proactive in a couple of key situations (versus a Terminus or an Infernal Tutor for example). That being said, Surgical can almost be your 5th and 6th Force of Will against certain combo decks.

I run Sorin lord of innistrad. You can run whatever token generating walker you like the best, but I definitely think you should run 1 because it helps break parity versus miracles and it helps get us closer to even versus shardless, maverick and aggro loam..

I haven't run divert yet, but I've been strongly considering it versus shardless.

I also like additional removal and board wipes because we struggle against swarms.

Thanks for all the feedback! How do you feel about something like this? I'm not sure about cutting a stoneforge mystic, almost every list i've seen runs 4 even with only two equipments.

I do like the idea of adding hymns, but my struggle is the BB requirement. Typically i try not to include spells i can't cast off just my basics, but i'm willing to give this a shot. I've seen a lot of hymn's go off and win games on the spot. Even if it doesn't i guess its essentially automatic card advantage whenever i can resolve it which is usually not a bad thing.

I want to fit 2 hymns in here but i feel like esper charm is sort of hymn #2 but more flexible.

Added an engineered plague for another crowd control spell. Hopefully 3 board wipers should be enough.

Honestly, i'm not really sold on Nahiri or token producers. I just find the 5 mana to expensive. I don't really have room for it either without cutting something from the SB so i'm going to omit it for now.

I think this is an exceptional list. I really like it. I think you chose the best basic land to include because it gives you the corner case out of drawing a plains and casting sfm versus Blood moon stompy decks.

I'm a big fan of the 2 main deck lingering souls. I think you have better games versus the bad matchups that we encounter, shardless and maverick and aggro loam. It also makes the miracles matchup slightly favored, if I had to guess.

The number of lands looks great.

I used to play an esper walker control list and I ran a creature sweet of 1 Venser 2 Clique and 3 scm. Venser is a house. And it can almost hard lock certain matchups (think 12 post, which we are notoriously bad against, imo).

I think I would up my fow count to 3 and down my ponder count to 1. I use Stoneforge Mystic for additional shuffles alot.

A few other cards to consider, based on shifts in your meta:
- leovold (this card is straight FIRE)
- Atraxa (if your meta is chock full of Abrupt decay, again your mana base affords it better than my list because I run 3 basics)
- sanctum prelate (great versus storm, surprisingly good against shardless)
- Engineered Plague (if you find that Supreme Verdict isn't getting it done)
- Clique (if you find yourself surrounded by loam and miracles, this card is great)

This list doesn't work in my meta but I reallly like it for a agree tournament setting or a meta that doesn't punish a greedy mana base as much (in a miracles and shardless meta, for example).

EDIT:
Neo likes bitterblossom. I'm a fan of Sorin lord of innistrad. Specifically because of the lifelink and the acceleration that it provides alongside Lingering souls. Other day vs aggro loam (a real bad matchup) I ticked up Sorin twice, and then I cast and flashbacked souls and ticked Sorin down and presented lethal.

jwl3gg

12-15-2016, 05:42 PM

Awesome suggestions! I was thinking about cutting a Ponder for another Force. What should I cut for a Leovold? I can't decide.

ClimbGneiss

12-15-2016, 05:46 PM

Awesome suggestions! I was thinking about cutting a Ponder for another Force. What should I cut for a Leovold? I can't decide.

Depends on your meta. My guess is that leovold will replace Supreme Verdict or Submerge.

Another question, what is your meta like? Because Karakas doesn't make a lot of sense if you aren't encountering a lot of reanimator or show and tell.

First_Revenge

12-15-2016, 05:52 PM

I'll just throw in my 2 cents about karakas.

I actually just cut karakas for a wasteland and i'll echo Gneiss's thoughts above. I just found it wasn't pulling its weight as a utility land. Reanimator gets griselbrand and karakas looks foolish. Even marit lage tokens get made at instant speed now and typically your karakas just gets hit by wasteland not too long after. I'd add another blue source, a wasteland, or perhaps a creeping tarpit.

Also, just curious, what has your experience been with venser?

jwl3gg

12-15-2016, 06:55 PM

My current meta...

UR Delver x2
RUG Delver
BUG Delver
Esper Deathblade
Miracles x2

RB Reanimator
Belcher
Burn x2
Elves

Blue Lands
Jund
Punishing Loam
Maverick
Lands
(I was Maverick)

There's usually 2 Reanimator decks and another Maverick player. The Karakas was for the Reanimator, lands and GWB decks, though if y'all think it's better I can switch it out.

First_Revenge

12-15-2016, 07:11 PM

maybe cut it for another basic island or swamp? Your mana base is greedy so perhaps a bit more stability will help

ClimbGneiss

12-15-2016, 08:06 PM

My current meta...

UR Delver x2
RUG Delver
BUG Delver
Esper Deathblade
Miracles x2

RB Reanimator
Belcher
Burn x2
Elves

Blue Lands
Jund
Punishing Loam
Maverick
Lands
(I was Maverick)

There's usually 2 Reanimator decks and another Maverick player. The Karakas was for the Reanimator, lands and GWB decks, though if y'all think it's better I can switch it out.

Ok good to know. Yeah you certainly could use a swamp to help get your Deathrite Shaman in play and it's good against lands and against Blood moons from miracles sideboard. Good against maverick and and aggro loam. And with swamp, if you draw cards you can't cast, at least they can't Wasteland you while you wait to draw additional lands.

Looks like extra, inexpensive removal would also be helpful vs the delvers and elves. I run diabolic edict. It's pretty good against reanimator and lands. Plenty of other options.

Leovold will be good versus elves actually in case you know they're playing towards drawing their deck. It's good versus miracles. Good versus lands and aggro loam (Punishing Fire is very bad against leovold). Could also be good versus delver, but I have no idea because I've never had the opportunity to try it.

Surgicals look super important in your meta. If you are only running one Snapcaster Mage then a single rest in peace is really good versus a meta with knight o the reliquary, tarmogoyf, nimble mongoose, br reanimator, and lands.

But hey, your list looks pretty solid and I feel like if you have familiarity and comfortability with your list, it goes a long way. This deck is really user play skill dependent. So, if you have a build that suits you, rock it.

Neo900

12-17-2016, 11:22 PM

This sunday is the monthly major event and I am going to play this list:

I am playing 4 Mystics and 3 Equipment right now. The meta is really grindy and sometimes agressive in form of Reanimator (mostly rb). Working more on the grind plan I cut Engineered Explosives. It blows my stuff away but other decks can come online again. When my Bitterblossom dies or my power on the board I need more time to get into the game again.
Without Explosives I can play safely Sylvan Library and more equipment. Jace the Mind Sculptor is too slow right now.

MTGPlayer

12-20-2016, 05:01 AM

I really like this list that 5-0'd a league. Very tight and efficient. Probably only needs 20 lands considering 4 Deathrites and 4 Ponders.

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=14269&d=285121&f=LE

What do you think?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Neo900

12-20-2016, 05:52 AM

it's very controlish. 4 stoneforge and 2 equipment creates dead cards.
The problem Deathblade is bad as a pure control deck. Miracles does it better. you have only 12 creatures. Also he didn't play Planeswalker. I feel this list is way to powerless.
20 lands is a bad idea. This is hard control you should add more lands.
there is also no finisher. True-name Nemesis is a great card but can't do the job alone.

jwl3gg

12-20-2016, 06:54 AM

How would Aura Shards be in our sideboard? I was thinking of running it instead of Disenchant.

Neo900

12-20-2016, 07:23 AM

3 mana enchantment is not good. it's not reactive and too slow. disenchant, decay and/or krosan grip should be better

jwl3gg

12-20-2016, 06:10 PM

Thanks!

jwl3gg

12-23-2016, 06:47 PM

If I can't find an Underground Sea should I play a Creeping Pit, Swamp or Island?

Seraphix

12-23-2016, 11:56 PM

If I can't find an Underground Sea should I play a Creeping Pit, Swamp or Island?

This depends a lot on what spells and what other lands you are playing. Generally I'd say 3 UB lands is the minimum amount you can play though. I've done 2 Seas/1 Tar-Pit before and it was functional, but not ideal IMO.

This sunday is the monthly major event and I am going to play this list:

...

List

...

I know you're a fan of Bitterblossom. I have some questions about the card:

>How good is it in the Grixis Pyromancer matchup? Its hard for them to remove if resolved and the bodies are relevant, but I think the life loss is also an important factor.

>To what degree do you respect Wear/Tear against Miracles when playing this card? i.e. will you sandbag it when you have an Equip out or vice-versa.

jwl3gg

12-24-2016, 10:58 AM

Should I cut Venser in favor of Leovold? I mean, they're both so good!

Submerge is a tempo card and not ideal as removal for this deck.
Supreme verdict is quite expensive in its cost.

Venser can lock opponents out. But it needs too much mana. Leovold is overall the stronger card with its passive ability and 3/3 body. Also he costs only 3 mana but bug can be hard to support. But as a one off it shouldn't be a problem.

Bitterblossom works great. Most of the times underrated by the opponent. The flying is huge for connecting with jitte or chump blocking. 1 life for a 4/5 tarmogoyf is fair.

littlegreenman

12-25-2016, 11:51 PM

@Neo900 and @ESG thank you both for your thoughts on dealing with Blood Moon. It's not overly rampant in my meta, but shows up occasionally in Painter and UR Delver. I do run EE in the main so for now I'll stick to strong mulligan's for an answer before stretching the mana base too thin. It does seem like a bit of a toss-up as to whether an island or plains would be more appropriate after the singleton swamp. Although the island let's you dig for answers it doesn't necessarily let you cast them which makes me think if I do add another basic it should likely be the plains for stoneforge mystic.

I have a completely different opinion here. I don't like Engineered Explosives as an answer to moon because you're not likely to hit 3 different colors of mana after a moon resolves, even with 2 basics. I also don't like the idea of running basics in this list. You're trying to get enough mana for four different colors with only 15 or so lands, so you want as many duals and fetches as you can. If you're going to run a basic, I don't get why you'd run a plains/island/swamp anyway. The obvious choice to me is a forest. If they play blood moon, crack a fetch for a forest in response, then you can play any of your 8 shamans or hierarchs for whatever mana you need. That, and you're one deathrite away from being able to abrupt decay away the moon. Forest is also a good answer to a wasteland lock for this reason. But the best way to answer a moon is daze/force.

Neo900

12-26-2016, 07:15 AM

Forest kills the mana base. Onmy decay and deathrite are castable with forest.
Explosives on 3 is more a proactive action as a reactive. We have to assume that there is a blood moon.
I play 1 swamp right now and it doesn't hurt. With bitternlossom I can win while there is a moon. Also I have deathrite shaman to fix mana.

Seraphix

12-26-2016, 10:41 AM

I have a completely different opinion here. I don't like Engineered Explosives as an answer to moon because you're not likely to hit 3 different colors of mana after a moon resolves, even with 2 basics. I also don't like the idea of running basics in this list. You're trying to get enough mana for four different colors with only 15 or so lands, so you want as many duals and fetches as you can. If you're going to run a basic, I don't get why you'd run a plains/island/swamp anyway. The obvious choice to me is a forest. If they play blood moon, crack a fetch for a forest in response, then you can play any of your 8 shamans or hierarchs for whatever mana you need. That, and you're one deathrite away from being able to abrupt decay away the moon. Forest is also a good answer to a wasteland lock for this reason. But the best way to answer a moon is daze/force.

It sounds like you are referring to Bant Deathblade (Hierarch, Daze). That deck is discussed in the "Bant" thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?16059-Deck-Bant/page109).

This thread should probably be named "Esper Deathblade" to erase any ambiguity.

sanderanders

12-28-2016, 03:17 AM

Why 3 Thoughtseizes and 1 Inquisition of K.? Why not just 4 Thoughseizes?

Neo900

12-28-2016, 04:17 AM

Why 3 Thoughtseizes and 1 Inquisition of K.? Why not just 4 Thoughseizes?
I don't know which list you refer to.
But a reason could be that he don't have an additional one. also the lifeloss is not irrelevant. 3 thoughtseize= 6 life. With 2 or 3 fetches you are down to 12 without taking damage by the opponent.
I like to play Liliana of the Veil in this slot anyway.

Seraphix

12-28-2016, 09:57 AM

Why 3 Thoughtseizes and 1 Inquisition of K.? Why not just 4 Thoughseizes?

I try to be cute and play 1 IOK sometimes but it's really a lot worse than Thoughtseize overall. You wish your IOK was a Thoughtseize a lot more than the other way around.

I played Deathblade at my local last night and went 4-1 with this list:

Trying Jace VP in place of 2nd SCM and Bitterblossom in place of a PW and they are OK so far. I think the optimal build right now is 4C with 0 basics for ~3 Decay + 2 Leovold but that's not my cup of tea.

ClimbGneiss

12-28-2016, 12:28 PM

I try to be cute and play 1 IOK sometimes but it's really a lot worse than Thoughtseize overall. You wish your IOK was a Thoughtseize a lot more than the other way around.

I played Deathblade at my local last night and went 4-1 with this list:

Trying Jace VP in place of 2nd SCM and Bitterblossom in place of a PW and they are OK so far. I think the optimal build right now is 4C with 0 basics for ~3 Decay + 2 Leovold but that's not my cup of tea.

I like your list a lot. Especially for a meta which is this weird hybrid of combo decks and decks built to beat decks that can beat combo decks. Looks like you waded through several difficult to beat matches, what were the cards that made the difference?

Seraphix

12-28-2016, 08:42 PM

I like your list a lot. Especially for a meta which is this weird hybrid of combo decks and decks built to beat decks that can beat combo decks. Looks like you waded through several difficult to beat matches, what were the cards that made the difference?

Against Shardless I got Jace the Mind Sculptor out early and was able to protect him and grind out my opponent. That's probably one of the best ways to come out on top in this terrible matchup. G2 was a grind that couldn't come to a conclusion.

Aggro Loam, I had a ton of action in G1 and he never got Grove + Fire or Loam + Wasteland going. In G3 we traded off resources on mulligans and then I out-topdecked him.

Against Omni-Sneak and Landstill I think I largely drew better than my opponent.

Overall the list is tried and (sometimes) true for me at this point. The new stuff (Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Bitterblossom) hasn't really shined yet, but has been good enough to keep playing.

I might want to play Mana Leak again but I think Spell Snare is a good slot right now against Counterbalance, Chalice, and D&T if you're lucky.

Neo900

12-29-2016, 04:28 AM

I like your list.
I have a problem with omnishow in my meta which is full of show and tell and nearly without miracles.
I want to play sword of feast and famine. It should help me against shardless more and combo. Against miracles it doesn't feel wrong. Let him discard and I have managed to interact with him.
I have to play some meddling mages and maybe sanctum prelate. Also I cut baleful strix for spell pierce/snare.

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Seraphix

12-29-2016, 12:41 PM

I like your list.
I have a problem with omnishow in my meta which is full of show and tell and nearly without miracles.
I want to play sword of feast and famine. It should help me against shardless more and combo. Against miracles it doesn't feel wrong. Let him discard and I have managed to interact with him.
I have to play some meddling mages and maybe sanctum prelate. Also I cut baleful strix for spell pierce/snare.

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I think Sword of Feast and Famine is inferior to Sword of Fire and Ice in almost every non-combo matchup.

Against Shardless F&F gives better Protections than F&I, but F&I has more impactful triggers, with the card advantage it generates being extremely important. Pro-Blue is still relevant by itself in the matchup against Strix, Agent, and Jace.

Against Miracles F&F's Protections are blank, and while the discard is ok it is much less impactful when they have Top. The untap effect isn't relevant since once you're connecting with a Sword-equipped creature you want to leave mana up to protect it and don't need to commit other threats to the board. On the other hand, the clock and CA provided by F&I is fantastic in this matchup, and Pro-Blue allows you to evade non-Monk blockers and Jace.

Against combo or non-interactive decks F&F's discard + untap is useful, but in these matchups F&I is still solid by speeding up your clock and drawing you into more disruption.

In any matchups aside from those mentioned above I think Jitte & Batterskull do most of the work, so I don't factor them into my decision of which Sword to play.

Overall, I would have a hard time justifying Sword of Feast & Famine in any UWxx Blade deck today unless your meta is all combo decks.

ClimbGneiss

12-29-2016, 01:19 PM

I think Sword of Feast and Famine is inferior to Sword of Fire and Ice in almost every non-combo matchup.

Against Shardless F&F gives better Protections than F&I, but F&I has more impactful triggers, with the card advantage it generates being extremely important. Pro-Blue is still relevant by itself in the matchup against Strix, Agent, and Jace.

Against Miracles F&F's Protections are blank, and while the discard is ok it is much less impactful when they have Top. The untap effect isn't relevant since once you're connecting with a Sword-equipped creature you want to leave mana up to protect it and don't need to commit other threats to the board. On the other hand, the clock and CA provided by F&I is fantastic in this matchup, and Pro-Blue allows you to evade non-Monk blockers and Jace.

Against combo or non-interactive decks F&F's discard + untap is useful, but in these matchups F&I is still solid by speeding up your clock and drawing you into more disruption.

In any matchups aside from those mentioned above I think Jitte & Batterskull do most of the work, so I don't factor them into my decision of which Sword to play.

Overall, I would have a hard time justifying Sword of Feast & Famine in any UWxx Blade deck today unless your meta is all combo decks.

Interesting. I'd really like to find a way to somehow maintain my excellent play versus combo and miracles but shore up shardless and aggro loam and maverick. I guess I can't have it all, but I feel like this deck needs to have a couple extra percentage points built in somewhere. The sideboard always helps. I love this decks sideboard. Other than miracles, I don't feel like any other deck is even close in terms of sideboard quality.

I cut Gideon and 2 nihil spellbomb for 2 Meddling Mage and cage. I feel safe with less gravehate. Reanimator is rare and against them I still have counter, priest and cage.
Meddling Mage should help against my show and tell problem and against miracles he can block terminus.

I cut Gideon and 2 nihil spellbomb for 2 Meddling Mage and cage. I feel safe with less gravehate. Reanimator is rare and against them I still have counter, priest and cage.
Meddling Mage should help against my show and tell problem and against miracles he can block terminus.

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I like your extra creature /swarm hate in your sideboard. I find I lose winnable games/matches to death and taxes and elves purely because of untimely draws. Often, what wins me games are the plagues and Zealous Persecutions.

whocansay

12-30-2016, 12:20 PM

Hi all, new to Legacy, new to Deathblade... played my first FNM last night with Neo900's current signature list - as I don't have the second Bitterblossom I run a Spell Snare instead.

your list seems solid but I don't like the 2 Thoughtseize. It's a strong disruptive spell and way too good to play only 2. With Liliana of the Veil you can cut one and play only 3. Thoughtseize is more than a discard spell. It's proactive control and helps us to come through the early game. You can cut the Baleful Strix or Spell Pierce/snare.
Baleful Strix is more like a flex slot and a meta call if the meta is very aggressive and full of eldrazi. Also you want to play more than one if you need Baleful Strix.
Counter are control spells like Thoughtseize but in a reactive way.
the biggest advantage which Thoughtseize provides is information. You know what your opponent can do and how he can react, or not. This will lead to different plays through the game and better choices. Even Brainstorm gets better if you know which cards you really need and which ones not.

jwl3gg

12-30-2016, 05:03 PM

Thanks for the heads up, I'm working on tweaking it for Louisville.

ClimbGneiss

12-31-2016, 12:59 PM

So, I tried Bitterblossom I'm my sideboard. Color me impressed. I didn't quite understand it before, but now I do.
Every matchup I brought it in, I drew and played it and saw my opponent squirm. I think it will be helpful against those midrangy fair decks that I have talked about being problematic.

glazed

01-01-2017, 09:15 AM

So, I tried Bitterblossom I'm my sideboard. Color me impressed. I didn't quite understand it before, but now I do.
Every matchup I brought it in, I drew and played it and saw my opponent squirm. I think it will be helpful against those midrangy fair decks that I have talked about being problematic.

I did squirm when you played it, but only for a moment ;)

I play Stoneblade rather than Deathblade. And as soon as he played the Bitterblossom, the two Lingering Souls in my hand were outclassed. Definitely a solid sideboard card in our meta.

ClimbGneiss

01-01-2017, 09:47 AM

I did squirm when you played it, but only for a moment ;)

I play Stoneblade rather than Deathblade. And as soon as he played the Bitterblossom, the two Lingering Souls in my hand were outclassed. Definitely a solid sideboard card in our meta.

Lingering Souls is also impressive. I like either card paired with Sorin. They create blistering fast clocks out of nowherem

However, I'm thinking of fitting on a Disenchant, a Toxic Deluge or Engineered Explosives, and maybe Invasive Surgery.

The invasive surgery feels like it will basically always be an envelop so I'm not hyped on it. Toxic Deluge and Disenchant feel very good and deal with a lot of board states we have issues with, what would you cut from my current sb list? My initial thought is to remove Lingering Souls.

First_Revenge

01-02-2017, 02:32 AM

I'd probably cut sorin instead of lingering souls. I think we've discussed this earlier at some point, while i like the idea behind sorin and nahiri i just find the 5 mana casting cost too expensive.

Question for you guys, i've been having trouble with my eldrazi matchups. Its somewhat prevalent in my meta along with some goblin stompy/dnt/wierd aggro decks. I don't really have anything mainboard to deal with the problem. I've posted my list earlier, but the removal package is pretty standard, 4 STP and 1 vindicate. My sideboard is also pretty weak against eldrazi. I have 3 crowd control spells, zealous persecution, engineered plague, and toxic deluge. But only toxic deluge really helps against eldrazi. Persecution and plague just tickle reality smasher as it rolls me. But even then, toxic deluge is pretty painful to cast.

So my question is this, what mainboard sweeper if any would you recommend against eldrazi? I liked another toxic deluge maindeck since its a scalable sweeper and gives me another game 1 out against any aggro deck. I thought about supreme verdict, but i've found that its generally just too clunky to cast most of the time, even if it is uncounterable.

Thanks for your feedback!

Neo900

01-02-2017, 04:34 AM

I play Invasive Surgery in the same slot as Flusterstorm. Storm players will name flusterstorm and force of will with cabal therapy but nobody knows about surgery. It's a little sideboardtech.
Against Eldrazi I have no problems. Bitterblossom produces chump blockers and getting 1 life loss from an attacking 4/4 is just fair.
Cards which help me: Engineeted Explosives, Decay, Toxic Deluge, Pithing Needle, Swords to Plowshares

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ClimbGneiss

01-02-2017, 12:30 PM

I play Invasive Surgery in the same slot as Flusterstorm. Storm players will name flusterstorm and force of will with cabal therapy but nobody knows about surgery. It's a little sideboardtech.
Against Eldrazi I have no problems. Bitterblossom produces chump blockers and getting 1 life loss from an attacking 4/4 is just fair.
Cards which help me: Engineeted Explosives, Decay, Toxic Deluge, Pithing Needle, Swords to Plowshares

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Which situations do you bring in Engineered explosives? Versus Chalice? Versus elves?

Seraphix

01-02-2017, 01:08 PM

I play Invasive Surgery in the same slot as Flusterstorm. Storm players will name flusterstorm and force of will with cabal therapy but nobody knows about surgery. It's a little sideboardtech.
Against Eldrazi I have no problems. Bitterblossom produces chump blockers and getting 1 life loss from an attacking 4/4 is just fair.
Cards which help me: Engineeted Explosives, Decay, Toxic Deluge, Pithing Needle, Swords to Plowshares

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For Eldrazi Toxic is the best sweeper, it can be painful but Verdict is just too hard to cast for this deck.

Which situations do you bring in Engineered explosives? Versus Chalice? Versus elves?

Since I don't play Abrupt Decay I like EE as a bootleg answer to Counterbalance (you can pump the casting cost up as much as you want, just make sure you're only spending 2 different colors of mana on it to set it to 2).

ClimbGneiss

01-02-2017, 08:53 PM

For Eldrazi Toxic is the best sweeper, it can be painful but Verdict is just too hard to cast for this deck.

Since I don't play Abrupt Decay I like EE as a bootleg answer to Counterbalance (you can pump the casting cost up as much as you want, just make sure you're only spending 2 different colors of mana on it to set it to 2).

I'd probably cut sorin instead of lingering souls. I think we've discussed this earlier at some point, while i like the idea behind sorin and nahiri i just find the 5 mana casting cost too expensive.

Question for you guys, i've been having trouble with my eldrazi matchups. Its somewhat prevalent in my meta along with some goblin stompy/dnt/wierd aggro decks. I don't really have anything mainboard to deal with the problem. I've posted my list earlier, but the removal package is pretty standard, 4 STP and 1 vindicate. My sideboard is also pretty weak against eldrazi. I have 3 crowd control spells, zealous persecution, engineered plague, and toxic deluge. But only toxic deluge really helps against eldrazi. Persecution and plague just tickle reality smasher as it rolls me. But even then, toxic deluge is pretty painful to cast.

So my question is this, what mainboard sweeper if any would you recommend against eldrazi? I liked another toxic deluge maindeck since its a scalable sweeper and gives me another game 1 out against any aggro deck. I thought about supreme verdict, but i've found that its generally just too clunky to cast most of the time, even if it is uncounterable.

Thanks for your feedback!

I played a version of Esper StoneBlade (no Deathrite Shaman) that had an amazing matchup vs. Eldrazi. My friend coined the term "Strixblade" because the main source of card advantage was the three maindeck Baleful Strix.

Baleful Strix and Academy Ruins is an unbeatable interaction against Eldrazi.

He did really well at the Worcester open in 2016 where Eldrazi was a big part of the meta. I've been tuning Esper ever since.

ClimbGneiss

01-04-2017, 08:08 PM

Played in a ~40+ weekly (not typical, but it was awesome to see that many players!)
I split 1st place at 4-0-1 (and the draw was in the last round because 1st and 2nd were the same prize). When I played out the last round I won in 2; so, I consider it a 5-0 performance.

Rd1, vs Grixis Delver. 2-1. Opponent was a good buddy of mine.
G1, I mulled to 5 bc of land light hands. Got wasted out.
G2, he played delver. I played whatever. He played cabal therapy and saw Bitterblossom and sacrificed delver to it because he didn't have an answer to that card. I won shortly afterwards.
G3, I steadily cast spells in a measured way though removal and fought over the last Spell I wanted to resolve. I landed Bitterblossom and blocked delver for 4ish turns. Eventually stuck a more significant threat.

Rd2 vs TES. 2-0. Knew my opponent was on TES because I saw him sitting next to me.
G1, mulled to 6 looking for action. Got a mana leak. Opponent went off while I was at 1 mana on his 2nd turn, I brainstormed and hit a force of will and won.
G2, I kept a hand with thoughtseize. I cast it and saw infernal, led, led, burning wish, dark Ritual, the red ritual. I took Infernal I'm pretty sure. He again went off the next turn but I had top decked a force of will and won.

Rd 3, vs Aluren. 2-0
G1, I couldn't identity my opponent for a long time. I held back creatures for a while, which is just plain bad. Eventually I landed threats and swung in to win. Opponent did mostly nothing...strange.
G2, opponent mulled to 4. I won but not before my opponent nearly clawed back into the game on the back of coiling oracles and Baleful strix. Saving grave was that my opponent got to 4 mana but there was no second green source in hand for the Aluren. I cast Thoughtseize and my opponent scooped.

Rd 4, vs ur delver control. 2-1.
I had seen this deck take down bant Blade earlier so I knew after board he would bring in several Smash to Smithereens.
G1, I jammed threats until I landed sfm and equipped it with sofai prompting a quick scoop.
G2, I pumped HARD. I had tnn, sfm, drs in play with wasteland, 3 duals, a basic Plains, a wasteland and a Polluted delta. I didn't play around Price of Progress at 13 life. Tapped wasteland, basic Plains and two duals for jitte and equip cost. I had two Swords in hand. My remaining dual was a tropical. When my opponent cast pop the first time I cracked for an ISLAND?! Then my opponent Snapcaster targeted the pop. I had 6 available life from Jitte and drs activation but the tnn he had plus the extra 8 pop damage.
G3, he played 1st turn top. I played 2nd turn Bitterblossom and he Spell pierced. I eventually fought through some counters and landed Sorin lord of innistrad. I ticked Sorin up until I had 4 lifelinker vamps and then ticked down. He eventually scooped and showed me bolt, pop and Smash to smithereens. Essentially, he punted back to me, not realizing pop could redirect at sorin.

Rd 5, ID vs show and tell classic. We play it out and I 2-0 him
G1, I cast drs, then Thoughtseize and sfm for sofai. Quick win.
G2, I cast Thoughtseize and take Cunning Wish or force of will. He had 2 sneak attack and a griselbrand in hand. I was sort of experimenting because I had a Meddling made in hand and I figured I could 3 for 1 him. Anyway? He eventually drew show and tell and I brainstormed into Pithing needles. He swings twice with griselbrand but I eventually find Vindicate and win with a tnn and 2 deathrite.

glazed

01-04-2017, 09:25 PM

So I typically play some variant of Stoneblade as I really enjoy playing with Lingering Souls, Baleful Strix, and Academy Ruins. But I have recently decided to try my hand at a Deathblade variant.

I like having the EE maindeck, it's a nice catch all answer against a lot of tricky cards. But I don't have a ton of experience playing it in the same deck as DRS, so I may just move it to the board. I'd also like to find room for a Bitterblossom in the board, although I'm not sure what to cut.

I'm a big fan of having Karakas. In a meta plagued with Sneak and Show, BR Reanaimator, and Turbo Depths, it is a very relevant answer. Also having access to the (soft) lock of Vendilion Clique and Karakas is not something that should be ignored.

ClimbGneiss

01-05-2017, 06:34 AM

So I typically play some variant of Stoneblade as I really enjoy playing with Lingering Souls, Baleful Strix, and Academy Ruins. But I have recently decided to try my hand at a Deathblade variant.

I like having the EE maindeck, it's a nice catch all answer against a lot of tricky cards. But I don't have a ton of experience playing it in the same deck as DRS, so I may just move it to the board. I'd also like to find room for a Bitterblossom in the board, although I'm not sure what to cut.

I'm a big fan of having Karakas. In a meta plagued with Sneak and Show, BR Reanaimator, and Turbo Depths, it is a very relevant answer. Also having access to the (soft) lock of Vendilion Clique and Karakas is not something that should be ignored.

I like it. EE seems good. Miracles is running it main deck, and they seem to know what they're doing. Also Karakas main deck is probably very good if you are surrounded by certain decks (show and tell, reanimator )

First_Revenge

01-05-2017, 06:05 PM

Just my two bits. I actually ended up yanking karakas out of my deck because I didnít find it to be super effective.

Iíve played the reanimator matchup a lot, and karakas just felt weak. The most common target for them has been griselbrand lately, and having them draw 7 or 14 in response to a karakas unsummon felt like prolonging the inevitable. The same problem exists with a griselbrand that gets put in via show and tell.

I didnít really like it against marit lage decks either. They can make marit tokens at instant speed, and they pack wastelands. So it felt like the same problem as reanimator. Sure I guess Iíd stop the first attack, but then watch my karakas get wastelanded and scoop the next turn.

Been running this list, been liking it in testing so far, but it's far from a traditional Deathblade list but i wanted to find a way to jam Daze into the deck because of how aggressive the format is atm, right now i am mostly looking for more strong Green Sun's targets because the card is great, the single Melira in the SB is there to abuse the GSZ package vs infect and it's a hilarious card to resolve against them especially since they won't know that the GSZ is potentially lethal for them, also trying some of the SB options that Reid was using in his Bant list just to see how i like them, although i was already running the Dread of Nights since DnT is normally such a bad matchup, the card really reins it in and makes it very hard for them to win.

Also Leovold is an absolute beast, the fact you can GSZ for him is awesome, and speaking on Karakas i think it is honestly not that great in most of the match ups that we would normally want it, mostly for the reasons stated above, if you are at the point of needing it you porbably have other problems that need dealing with, now that's not to say it's useless but in a 3 color deck that is often splashing for 4 i think having a non basic that produces 1 color can be fairly detrimental with all the wastelands running around.

Anyway would love to hear some thoughts from other long time Deathblade players.

glazed

01-07-2017, 02:30 PM

I went 3-0-1 at FNM. In the final round my opponent and I drew intentionally to split prizes, and I won our friendly match. So it is safe to consider it a 4-0 night.

I recently decided to cut the fourth FOW in the main deck so I could play a third True-Name Nemesis. In the short tournament against two decks where it would have mattered, it didnít. So I may continue with the fourth FOW sticking to the side board.

The Belcher match was decided in Game 3 by me having a Mana Leak and a Spell Snare in my hand.

The D&T matchup went as they usually do. I was lucky in drawing my basics or being in a spot where Port and Wastland did not take over the game. Thoughtseize was able to rip critical pieces from my opponentís hand and Karakas kept Thalia and Mangara from developing any sort of advantage.

My BR reanimation opponent was beaten with a well timed Thoughtseize and Deathrite Shaman in Game 1. Game two my opponent mulliganed to three and lost quickly.

I won Game 1 against Shardless of of two TNN with Sword of Fire and Ice. Game two, Liliana of the Veil with two Tarmogoyfs made quick work of me. Game three, Hymn de Tourach hit neither my SoFi nor my Batterskull, and a DRS yielding both ended the game quickly.

I have made recent changes that reflect ClimbGneissí list, minus the LoTV. Mana Leak was great last night, Seraphix's idea to add it to the deck. No one tries to play around having to pay three for there spell to resolve when staring down an Underground Sea and a Scrubland.

I like Spell Snare a lot. I donít think Iíll ever play a Deathblade variant without it. Karakas was greedy, but worth it tonight. Iím going to keep it in the deck for now even though it feels terrible playing a 3.5 color deck with two white sources.

Seraphix

01-07-2017, 03:49 PM

...

I have made recent changes that reflect ClimbGneissí list, minus the LoTV. Mana Leak was great last night. No one tries to play around having to pay three for there spell to resolve when staring down an Underground Sea and a Scrubland.

...

Hey man, give credit where credit's due! :P

Good luck to anyone at the GP!

glazed

01-07-2017, 04:13 PM

Hey man, give credit where credit's due! :P

Good luck to anyone at the GP!

Fixed :) wrote it in a hurry this morning before I had to drive home in the snow.

Looks like I'll be attending GP Baltimore as my team's Legacy player. Looking at either Esper or Bant.

Neo900

01-14-2017, 05:14 PM

So after the big tournament today I have to change some gameplans. The meta was: 5 Show and Tell, 3 Reanimator, 1 Dredge out of 27 players.
Engineered Explosives: It's a nice card to have in a creature heavy meta. But it can't handle the decks above so I kicked it to break my deck down to 60 cards.

True-Name Nemesis: With 3 mana quite slow and not fast enough to win. Since I need more counter and come more controlish I decide to Play a Flusterstorm instead.
Also thought about Tombstalker and Keep Nemesis. I can pitch it for Force of Will as well.

Bitterblossom: I like the card a lot. After my judge reward Vendilion Clique it's my favorite Card. But it's too slow. I cut one for Baleful Strix and the second for Vendilion Clique. Without Punishing Fire is Clique quite strong. It's a flyer which controls the opponent's hand

Also I need a better Sideboard, I guess. Sword of Fire and Ice is not that strong right now. Lost Legacy seems good enough against combo decks

Iíve been lately wondering if Meddling Mage was actually effective or not. I see two of them in every SB slot and Iíve recently stopped using it (Iíve just added two Spell Pierce against combo, a match that I think is not that favorable to this deck)
The reason why is that I donít really know what to name, especially against storm, could you help me out?

Storm (this is the critical one): I was thinking about the tutors (but if you name Infernal, you havenít seen his hand, and they have B Wish is gg, itís quite bad the other way around as well)

Sneak Attack: Show and Tell over Sneak attack?

Lands: Should we use It here?

Against Smash to Smithereens: Is it worth trying to protect your equipment? Even if your mage gets bolted?

Miracles: quite effective for terminus

Any other ideas will be welcome :smile:

First_Revenge

01-17-2017, 02:34 AM

Starting a new habit, Iím going to try and write an after tourney report. Mostly itíll be my stores weekly legacy games on Mondays. Might be long, but I want to record good moments but mostly mistakes/lessons learned. If this is too spammy lmk and Iíll keep it to myself. Do give me feedback if you see any opportunities to do so.

Round 1 Ė Omnitell - Win
Game 1:
Not really any mistakes I could identify. Just didnít get enough counterspells in hand, he resolved show and tell with omniscience, played emrakul, and I lost.

Game 2:
Sideboard:
-3 True Name Nemesis
-4 Swords to Plowshares
-1 Vindicate
+2 Flusterstorm
+2 Meddling mage
+1 Invasive Surgery
+1 Surgical Extraction
+1 Ethersworn Canonist
+1 Containment Priest
Kept a reasonable starting hand with some counters. At some point through draws or brainstorms I found invasive surgery and surgical extraction. Managed to stick a stoneforge mystic and batterskull on board. When he went for the show and tell it got countered. Afterwards surgical extraction targeting show and tell taking away his primary win con. Batterskull closed the game out.

Game 3:
Really sloppy game on my part. Started well counterspells and surgical extraction popped up again. Managed to stick a bitterblossom and a deathrite shaman about a turn or two before he attempted to show and tell. Show and tell got countered and surgically extracted again which was great for me. Game stalled out from there. Managed to land a stoneforge mystic/batterskull and glued the batterskull to a faerie token. However, he had resolved a Talrand, Sky Summoner and eternally chumped my faerie token. I managed to stick a jace and brainstormed like a madman for counterspells. I would have been dead to a top decked Dream Halls.

Major mistake was missing several deathrite shaman drain activations. I won in the end, but the missed deathrite drains gave him around 2-3 turns extra to try and find dream halls in a deck full of cantrips. Got away with murder on that one.

Round 2-Miracles-Loss
Game 1:
Stuck a bitterblossom early, but he had engineered explosive early. Got a faeire suited up with a jitte and got him to 5 life, but he had a terminus to get rid of the faeries and another terminus to deal with the follow up true name nemesis. Then got locked out with the counterbalance lock. Terminus sucks.

Awkward mana, in retrospect I should not have kept this hand. 1 Wasteland, 1 Swamp, 1 Fetch, 2 Meddling Mage, 1 Invasive Surgery, canít remember 7th card. In either case the plan was to lock him out with the meddling mages, but I never found another blue or white source to cast them. The hand stalled out and I got locked out by counterbalance.

Generally speaking this is my least favorite game of magic to play .

Round 3 Ė Sneak and Show Ė Win

Game 1:
Didnít have enough counter magic. Lost to a griselbrand that got snuck into play. Not much to say here. Donít think I couldíve done differently, just couldnít stop show and tell from resolving.

Probably my luckiest win to date. Opening 7 was a one land hand with no cantrips. I mulliganed down to 6, then 5, then 4, then 3. None of the hands had any lands in them. When I got to 3 cards no lands I tilted and was about to concede. My opponent encouraged me to play it out.

Three cards were a deathrite, vendilion clique, and a spell pierce. Scry revealed a land on top. Passed the turn, drew the land played it and passed back. Next turn drew a fetchland, and cliqueíd opponent at endstep, taking a force of will. He spent the rest of the game drawing lands while I found counterspells. Lesson of the day, donít tilt.

Game 3:
Won pretty handily. Turn 1 pithing needle on sneak attack. His keep was greedy, a one land hand, I was able to punish it with a wasteland. Game durdled a bit, managed to stick a stoneforge in and get batterskull in play. Almost made a huge mistake. I had a meddling mage in hand that I didnít play because I didnít know what to target. I could have resolved it safely. In retrospect the call was obvious, show and tell. At the time I choked and just kept it in hand. Next turn he attempted to resolve a top decked show and tell. I felt incredibly stupid looking at an uncast meddling mage in hand which could have prevented this problem. Thankfully, brainstorm bailed me out, a force and a spell pierce were in the top 3. Countered the show and tell and ran him over with batterskull shortly thereafter.

Other Thoughts;
Meddling mage is house again show and tell decks. I do need to learn decks better if I want to leverage it properly.

Surgical Extraction overperformed. I like it way more than I like nihil spellbomb. I will be yank the spellbomb in favor of another extraction next Monday.

Invasive surgeryís delirium trigger is more difficult to activate than I anticipated. It was still solid as a 1 mana counterspell though. Maybe it becomes a flusterstorm down the road.

Neo900

01-17-2017, 08:58 AM

Meddling Mage is a powerful card.
What you name with it depends on the situation and the informatipn ypu might have.

Miracles: Terminus is fine. It creates pressure. Even counterbalance on turn 2 could be ok to prevent the lock.
Storm: typical here is infernal. Agains tes it is hard because they have burning wish as well.
Show and Tell; Show and Tell. We have needle and priest for sneak attack. Show and tell is just the more flexible card.
Reanimator: you can use it to minimize their options to reanimate something. I name exhume because it doesn't target and is harder to hate with shaman or surgical.
Dredge: dread return or cabal therapy. They don't cast anything else.

Seraphix

01-17-2017, 10:49 AM

Hi,

Iíve been lately wondering if Meddling Mage was actually effective or not. I see two of them in every SB slot and Iíve recently stopped using it (Iíve just added two Spell Pierce against combo, a match that I think is not that favorable to this deck)
The reason why is that I donít really know what to name, especially against storm, could you help me out?

Storm (this is the critical one): I was thinking about the tutors (but if you name Infernal, you havenít seen his hand, and they have B Wish is gg, itís quite bad the other way around as well)

Sneak Attack: Show and Tell over Sneak attack?

Lands: Should we use It here?

Against Smash to Smithereens: Is it worth trying to protect your equipment? Even if your mage gets bolted?

Miracles: quite effective for terminus

Any other ideas will be welcome :smile:

I think its crucial to have hatebears in the sideboard and wouldn't advise cutting all your hatebears for Spell Pierces. Any good combo deck can beat spell-based interaction like permission, discard, or even both. By adding permanent-based interaction (which also attacks-very important because this deck has a slow clock), you force the combo deck to find answers for your spells AND creatures order to execute their gameplan.

Meddling Mage is the hatebear with the most versatile effect and pitches to Force of Will so its the first one I play, but I often add Ethersworn Canonist and/or Containment Priest as well.

As to what to name with Meddling Mage, it depends a lot on what's going on in the game, i.e. the cards you and your opponent have and the board state. But its good to have a few guidelines for different matchups.

Storm: First you need to identify which Storm variant your opponent is playing in G1. Keep in mind that A.N.T. is far more popular than T.E.S.. Generally, A.N.T. can be distinguished by having a basic Island, only Black Rituals (Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual), and its most straightforward kill involves Past in Flames, Infernal Tutor, and Tendrils. T.E.S. plays Red Rituals like Rite of Flame along with Burning Wish and will often go for a very fast Empty the Warrens. Against A.N.T., I name Infernal Tutor because their easiest routes to victory require it (they can definitely win without casting it, but its less likely and potentially more difficult). Against T.E.S. I would name Burning Wish because again it provides their easiest route to victory (they can win without it too as long as they've brought some win cons or interaction into their deck).

Sneak & Show: Even with no hand information I plan to name Show & Tell first. Its the scariest card for me because it comes out the soonest, and my list doesn't play Karakas or Liliana of the Veil so I'm often cold to a quickly resolved Show & Tell-->fatty. Showing in Sneak Attack with only one Red up to activate it in the same turn is quite dangerous as well. Sneak Attack is also scary but is slower and I can interact with it using Pithing Needle, Disenchant, and sometimes even Wastelanding Red sources.

Lands: Punishing Fire and Life from the Loam are great cards to name. Naming Fire allows you to protect Deathrite Shaman and put pressure on them with creatures. Naming Loam is great because the Lands deck becomes much less powerful when they can't Loam. I generally feel compelled to name Fire first, but its not always correct. Keep in mind they can have other ways of killing creatures like Kozilek's Return and Molten Vortex.

Burn: I wouldn't use it in this matchup.

Miracles: I bring it in here but I don't expect it to be great and it rarely is. They have so many problematic cards that its hard to meaningfully disrupt them by cutting one thing off in most board states.

pipet76

01-17-2017, 01:39 PM

Thanks a lot for answering

I'll try using MMage then.

In any case, if you don't bring MMage to Burn / URDelver matches, how do you deal with Smash to Sm ? It kinds of destroy all our game plan.

glazed

01-17-2017, 01:55 PM

Thanks a lot for answering

I'll try using MMage then.

In any case, if you don't bring MMage to Burn / URDelver matches, how do you deal with Smash to Sm ? It kinds of destroy all our game plan.

Honestly Mage isn't terrible against Burn because it plays like a combo deck (and some people argue it is a combo deck) and you can name the payoff spells like Fireblast and Price of Progress. But it really depends on your 75 what is truly effective against burn.

ClimbGneiss

01-17-2017, 06:14 PM

Meddling Mage is a powerful card.
What you name with it depends on the situation and the informatipn ypu might have.

Miracles: Terminus is fine. It creates pressure. Even counterbalance on turn 2 could be ok to prevent the lock.
Storm: typical here is infernal. Agains tes it is hard because they have burning wish as well.
Show and Tell; Show and Tell. We have needle and priest for sneak attack. Show and tell is just the more flexible card.
Reanimator: you can use it to minimize their options to reanimate something. I name exhume because it doesn't target and is harder to hate with shaman or surgical.
Dredge: dread return or cabal therapy. They don't cast anything else.

I would note that I bring in meddling mage vs miracles. You name Terminus and it forces them to 1 for 1 and Swords the Mage before using Terminus on your board. Gives you time to find answers. But, knowing miracles they will find all of the answers.

Against burn, my game plan is to fetch basics. Keep up Wasteland to waate my own duals in response to pop. Then I use sfm to find Jitte or batterskull. Jitte feels pretty good because of relative lack of cost to reequip. Try to avoid Sulfuric vortex. Landing tnn is also really effective as you can gum up the board versus their creature draws. I Force turn 1 Goblin guides because of the amount of damage that will usually rack up. You got to weigh to amount of damage each individual Spell will do.

pipet76

01-18-2017, 07:16 AM

When I mentioned MMage and Smash to S I was actually talking about U/R Delver that quite a thing in my meta. I really don't know how to play around it 'cause even if I counter / thoughsieze it they have Snap to bring it back.

And lets say I name it with MMage, they can always bolt the mage and then play Smash to S.

Seraphix

01-18-2017, 09:02 AM

When I mentioned MMage and Smash to S I was actually talking about U/R Delver that quite a thing in my meta. I really don't know how to play around it 'cause even if I counter / thoughsieze it they have Snap to bring it back.

And lets say I name it with MMage, they can always bolt the mage and then play Smash to S.

I think, in my limited experience, that I have did my best to play the control deck. Let them counter a threat or two in exchange for killing their limited threats. Then landing something that wins the game.

pipet76

01-23-2017, 10:42 AM

So, Iíve been testing MMage against storm a lot of times with a friend, and basically they have like 2 Massacres on their SB at the very least, so at each time he got rid of my mage with it and then he went off.

Itís really a complicated match in my opinion, and I donít know if MMage is the right for it. I was thinking about a Cannonist, but sheís not good at anything else.

Neo900

01-23-2017, 11:49 AM

canonist is also great against elves, omnishow. but ethersworn canonist has the same as meddling mage, he dies to massacre.
the storm match up is hard. you need a great mix including disruption, counterspells and hatebears.
I managed to win against TES by casting 3 thoughtseize and leaving him with just a few lands and a Lotus petal.
Leovold and flusterstorm is a great combination. you are allowed to draw a card for each storm copy they got. at least 8-10 cards. this allows you to find flusterstorm or mindbreak trap.
Leovold blocks also his cantrips.

ClimbGneiss

01-23-2017, 02:05 PM

canonist is also great against elves, omnishow. but ethersworn canonist has the same as meddling mage, he dies to massacre.
the storm match up is hard. you need a great mix including disruption, counterspells and hatebears.
I managed to win against TES by casting 3 thoughtseize and leaving him with just a few lands and a Lotus petal.
Leovold and flusterstorm is a great combination. you are allowed to draw a card for each storm copy they got. at least 8-10 cards. this allows you to find flusterstorm or mindbreak trap.
Leovold blocks also his cantrips.

Neo beat me to this, but the leovold interaction is one that I'm looking forward to witnessing. It really incentives brainstorming away your flusterstorm so they can't hit it with discard. Alternatively, if you know you will have 3 mana open you can hope to hit a Snapcaster and use Flusterstorm early so it's sitting in your yard. Leovold is definitely a very cool out.

Neo also mentioned the Thoughtseize route. It seems to me that my best games versus storm include Deathrite Shaman and thoughtseize. Thoughtseize let's you take the card that provides the quickest route to the combo and Deathrite Shaman provides both a clock and a means to limit cabal Ritual or pif route combos. Also, Deathrite helps you cast sfm or tnn while still leaving mana open for pierce/mana leak/counterspell/Spell snare.

I won't lie, though. I've done literally everything I could versus storm and still had them top deck a Brainstorm and perfect me by finding something like led, past in Flames. To me, it exemplifies why storm still reigns king of combo decks. I find all the other combo decks much easier to beat given the right mixture of sideboard cards.

If storm is a really big problem in your area, you could play Orim's chant. Yeah, I know, it's not practical against many decks but it can be used versus show and tell as a way of ensuring your Force of will wins. Or against elves after they go for the combo, or during a strategic point of comboing in which you can stop them and then wipe their board. Also, and I'm not sure on the ruling on this, but you might be able to use in response to the ancestral visions trigger and any miracle trigger.

Neo900

01-24-2017, 10:09 AM

Orim's chant is really special. With the right timing you can stop the whole deck. I would be afraid that Chant is too special in ist use. On the other side it can provide a time walk. In response to the last ancestral vision counter you are able to let it be into exile forever and with kicker it will be your turn.
But Flusterstorm will be the most flexible choice. And one or two Ethersworn Canonist.

ClimbGneiss

01-24-2017, 12:16 PM

Orim's chant is really special. With the right timing you can stop the whole deck. I would be afraid that Chant is too special in ist use. On the other side it can provide a time walk. In response to the last ancestral vision counter you are able to let it be into exile forever and with kicker it will be your turn.
But Flusterstorm will be the most flexible choice. And one or two Ethersworn Canonist.

Another option to pair with Leovold: Mindbreak Trap. This way, if you had been hoping to cross your fingers and draw into a way of stopping the combo, you can still manage It while being tapped out.

Not my favorite option, but it's probably good to be thorough with our options.

First_Revenge

01-25-2017, 12:30 PM

Question about leovold.

I really like the card generally speaking. I can see why he's so popular and i want to play him as a 2 of. The problem is the casting cost. BUG is not easy for my deck. I run a more conservative deathblade manabase with 4 basics, and a lone tropical island as the green source. The only reason its in there is to turn on deathrite's green ability as it can relevant somteimes. I'm in a pretty heavy wasteland meta.

While i could pretty easily slide 2 leovolds in i'm not sure how i handle the manabase. I'm pretty sure i'd need to add another green source, probably a bayou. But even then i'm not sure if 2 green sources plus the deathrites are enough.

Any opinions on the manabase required to run 2 leovolds? Is 2 green sources enough?

Thanks!

ClimbGneiss

01-25-2017, 01:53 PM

Question about leovold.

I really like the card generally speaking. I can see why he's so popular and i want to play him as a 2 of. The problem is the casting cost. BUG is not easy for my deck. I run a more conservative deathblade manabase with 4 basics, and a lone tropical island as the green source. The only reason its in there is to turn on deathrite's green ability as it can relevant somteimes. I'm in a pretty heavy wasteland meta.

While i could pretty easily slide 2 leovolds in i'm not sure how i handle the manabase. I'm pretty sure i'd need to add another green source, probably a bayou. But even then i'm not sure if 2 green sources plus the deathrites are enough.

Any opinions on the manabase required to run 2 leovolds? Is 2 green sources enough?

Thanks!

I have similar design constraints as you do, because of my meta. I run just a single Leovold.

Personally, the way that I walk the line is:
- if I have the option to fetch basics and develop my mana base, I do so. Then, I push a game plan based on the basics.
- If I start the game with actual dual lands, and no fetches, I will aggressively fetch Tropical knowing I could draw leovold later and wanting to be prepared to cast it. The way coverage folk on scg and my peers explain it is that if you are already vulnerable to Wasteland, you may as well go all in with non basics so that you can keep a diverse mana base while you develop your board through wastelands. If they waste you off green, you will need to hope for a Deathrite Shaman or a force of will to pitch leovold to.

First_Revenge

01-25-2017, 02:44 PM

I have similar design constraints as you do, because of my meta. I run just a single Leovold.

Personally, the way that I walk the line is:
- if I have the option to fetch basics and develop my mana base, I do so. Then, I push a game plan based on the basics.
- If I start the game with actual dual lands, and no fetches, I will aggressively fetch Tropical knowing I could draw leovold later and wanting to be prepared to cast it. The way coverage folk on scg and my peers explain it is that if you are already vulnerable to Wasteland, you may as well go all in with non basics so that you can keep a diverse mana base while you develop your board through wastelands. If they waste you off green, you will need to hope for a Deathrite Shaman or a force of will to pitch leovold to.

Maybe i do just run a one of? Honestly he seemed good enough to warrant a two of. Just to be clear in your build with 1 leovold you are only running one green source?

Neo900

01-25-2017, 03:38 PM

I run Leovold as an one off too. I play also 2 green sources. Bayou and Tropical Island. Besides Leovold I run 2 Abrupt Decay and, depending on the meta and my mood, a Sylvan Library. I don't have many problems while playing. Most of the times opponents focus on my white or black mana.
I play 2 Basics. A swamp and an island. The swamp enables Deathrite Shaman who can fix mana and easier Tombstalker. With a Gurmag Angler in this slot I would be able to cast it easier under Blood Moon or while I'm screwed. The island enables cantrips and counters. 4 Brainstorm, 2 Ponder and 2 Spell Pierce. Both together let me cast my one off Baleful Strix.
Many players like to have a plains for Stoneforge Mystic. That's totally okay. A Batterskull can help with tough mana problems. I play none because I have a Karakas. I don't want to play it because I would have 2 solo white mana scources which can destroy the whole mana base.
I played without Abrupt Decay and green for a while and had Vindicate and Council's Judgment. Swamp and Plains are great with Vindicate because it enables you to destroy a Blood Moon just with your basics.

First_Revenge

01-25-2017, 05:22 PM

I run Leovold as an one off too. I play also 2 green sources. Bayou and Tropical Island. Besides Leovold I run 2 Abrupt Decay and, depending on the meta and my mood, a Sylvan Library. I don't have many problems while playing. Most of the times opponents focus on my white or black mana.
I play 2 Basics. A swamp and an island. The swamp enables Deathrite Shaman who can fix mana and easier Tombstalker. With a Gurmag Angler in this slot I would be able to cast it easier under Blood Moon or while I'm screwed. The island enables cantrips and counters. 4 Brainstorm, 2 Ponder and 2 Spell Pierce. Both together let me cast my one off Baleful Strix.
Many players like to have a plains for Stoneforge Mystic. That's totally okay. A Batterskull can help with tough mana problems. I play none because I have a Karakas. I don't want to play it because I would have 2 solo white mana scources which can destroy the whole mana base.
I played without Abrupt Decay and green for a while and had Vindicate and Council's Judgment. Swamp and Plains are great with Vindicate because it enables you to destroy a Blood Moon just with your basics.

Hmm i don't run the two abrupts or the library, it would just be the one leovold, so it sounds like i might be able to get away with one green source then?

ClimbGneiss

01-25-2017, 07:07 PM

Hmm i don't run the two abrupts or the library, it would just be the one leovold, so it sounds like i might be able to get away with one green source then?

Your lists are looking quite good. Leovold is very strong. I like the idea to cut Jace for him. I'm playing without Jace for a few months now. Also I am back to Painful Truths.
Mostly it draws 3 cards and is a reload after removal, counter and putting threats into play.
Sylvan Library is more like a card quality machine instead of drawing power because the draw is too expensive without more Batterskull hits. Of course it's stronger if you are able to use it multiple turns. But I replaced the Library for Truths and I like it so far.

How is Counterspell doing ? I don't have agood feeling about it. Double blue is no problem since we play Nemesis and Clique. But leaving up 2 mana makes the game slow. Just 1 for Spell Pierce is sometimes hard for me because the other Options are playing Nemesis, use Stoneforge or just doing something to develope our game.

First_Revenge

01-28-2017, 10:54 PM

Your lists are looking quite good.

If you were talking to me thanks :)

I like the idea to cut Jace for him. I'm playing without Jace for a few months now.

Ya i'd agree honestly. As painful as it is for me to say jace is probably too slow. I will probably keep 1 maindeck though, just enjoy casting him too much.

Also I am back to Painful Truths. Mostly it draws 3 cards and is a reload after removal, counter and putting threats into play.

I might have to experiment with this card later if i ever find space. I used to run Esper Charm instead of painful. My rationale being that a 3 mana sorcery was probably a liability in most cases. Esper charm does draw you one less card but you can do it at instant speed. Its also a maindeck out against miracles as they usually pretty thin on 3 cmc cards. Making them discard 2 is also pretty sweet, i used that mode more often than i thought.

Sylvan Library is more like a card quality machine instead of drawing power because the draw is too expensive without more Batterskull hits. Of course it's stronger if you are able to use it multiple turns. But I replaced the Library for Truths and I like it so far.

I WANT TO PLAY LIBRARY SO BADLY. But its just soo greedy, i'm trying to be esper deathblade splashing green for a stabler manabase, but if i start adding leovolds and libraries i'm pretty much locked into 4 color at that point.

How is Counterspell doing ? I don't have agood feeling about it. Double blue is no problem since we play Nemesis and Clique. But leaving up 2 mana makes the game slow. Just 1 for Spell Pierce is sometimes hard for me because the other Options are playing Nemesis, use Stoneforge or just doing something to develope our game.

As a one off its fine. In the late game i love counterspell. Generally speaking in the late game spell pierce won't be good enough and force of will is almost always a 2-1. Counterspell fills the late game roll of being a counterspell they can't pay off and won't 2-1 me in the process. It can be clunky in the opening hand, but as a one off i don't see it that often or i can always brainstorm it away.

Lormador

01-28-2017, 11:12 PM

One way to feel better about not playing Sylvan Library is to imagine Leovold on the other side of the table.

KasumiFox

01-29-2017, 09:25 PM

One way to feel better about not playing Sylvan Library is to imagine Leovold on the other side of the table.

U know that u can just ignore ur own library, right?

pipet76

01-30-2017, 06:54 AM

Hi!

Iíve heard that V Clique is fantastic against both Dark Depths and Lands, and actually and canít see why. Is there an interaction Iím missing?

In my meta thereís a guy playing both versions and is constantly a game loss for me.

Thanks 

ClimbGneiss

01-30-2017, 08:13 AM

Hi!

Iíve heard that V Clique is fantastic against both Dark Depths and Lands, and actually and canít see why. Is there an interaction Iím missing?

In my meta thereís a guy playing both versions and is constantly a game loss for me.

Thanks 

V Clique is indeed amazing versus lands because after they replace draw with dredge, but still in their draw step, you can flash in Clique and get rid of Loam. Hopefully they only have one and they don't draw another, but you can shut down their loam engine for a few turns until they draw another or find a tutor. While you have time, it's wise to develop your board state with creatures and a Jace.
Also, if you can, sandbag a counterspell for a tutor effect.

Finally, Vendilion Clique is one of the only cards that can block Marit Lage in the deck. And, if you run Karakas, you can brick wall Lands or Turbo Depths for a turn or two until they wasteland the Karakas or Abrupt decay/Punishing Fire the Clique.

I'm not sure that Clique is great against turbo depths besides the blocking of marit lage.

Neo900

01-30-2017, 09:25 AM

Turbo dephts is more like a combo deck and lands a control deck. Besides that Lands runs more lands which makes it hard to hit something with Clique or Thoughtseize.
I played about 12 games against lands and lost just 1. Bitterblossom reduces Marit Large's damage to 1. Surgical and Invasive Surgery are both great in the Lands match up. Surgical gets rid of Punishing Fire and Invasive Surgery counters and removes Loam.

pipet76

01-30-2017, 12:34 PM

Turbo dephts is more like a combo deck and lands a control deck. Besides that Lands runs more lands which makes it hard to hit something with Clique or Thoughtseize.
I played about 12 games against lands and lost just 1. Bitterblossom reduces Marit Large's damage to 1. Surgical and Invasive Surgery are both great in the Lands match up. Surgical gets rid of Punishing Fire and Invasive Surgery counters and removes Loam.

I'm actually playing Lingering over Bitter since there's a lot of Burn / UR Delver in my meta. However I must admit that I have tu try Invasive S over Spell Pierce, seems excelent.

Neo900

01-31-2017, 10:55 PM

Also Baleful Strix is such a powerful value card. So many times I'm thinking about to cut it but most of my top8s had 2 Baleful Strix.
Lingering Souls makes also card advantage. Their discard becomes weaker, our Liliana of the Veil stronger.
I have to find the way how to fit extra Lingering Souls in the Main Deck. I guess it will be Ponder. Right now I have 2 copies but I want to replace one for Strix. Ponder is okay but I have the feeling while casting it that my game slows down too much.

LDX

01-31-2017, 11:11 PM

Finally, Vendilion Clique is one of the only cards that can block Marit Lage in the deck. And, if you run Karakas, you can brick wall Lands or Turbo Depths for a turn or two until they wasteland the Karakas or Abrupt decay/Punishing Fire the Clique.

Maybe am I missing something, but wouldn't it be easier to just Karakas the Marit Large itself? Instead of blocking with Clique, Karakas, cast again etc.

Neo900

02-01-2017, 12:18 AM

That's truly the better play ^^
But besides that Clique Karakas lock is one of my favorites and quite strong. It gives you perfect information, a fast clock and the disruptive element.

pipet76

02-01-2017, 08:22 AM

Maybe am I missing something, but wouldn't it be easier to just Karakas the Marit Large itself? Instead of blocking with Clique, Karakas, cast again etc.

I don't know. Remember they have a very easy access to Wasteland.

ClimbGneiss

02-01-2017, 12:08 PM

Maybe am I missing something, but wouldn't it be easier to just Karakas the Marit Large itself? Instead of blocking with Clique, Karakas, cast again etc.

Something to consider when playing vs lands. If possible, you try to spread their resources thin.
So, even if they are loaning every turn, if they don't have an exploration, they are going to be spending a lot of resources on you trying to Wasteland your duals, and Punishing Fire your creatures. If you sneak in the right creature at the right time, it really goes a long way.
So:
- Clique vs loam can win (assuming they only have one loam).
- Deathrite is obvious.
- Stoneforge Mystic that sticks around gets a sword of fire and ice to protect a creature from Punishing fire. Hopefully, you find one of the other equipment so you can equipment that as well for the life gain to protect yourself from dying to Lage.

Neo900

02-02-2017, 04:36 PM

AggroLoam is a hard match up. Lands is quite okay.
I would say the reason is that AggroLoam's playstyle is not as focused as the one of Lands. It's more flexible and has more options with their Knight, Chalice and GSZ.
Lands is straight forward with Dredge and Loam. I can predict turns against Lands better. Against Loam you have to focus on many things; Creatures, Graveyard, Planeswalker, Chalice.
Besides that AggroLoam builds are more unspecific. Lands is more linear. My best friend played AggroLoam since forever and plays it whole different than everyone else. That wouldn't work that well with Lands.

Technics

02-03-2017, 10:36 AM

So I guess it's not fully Esper or Deathblade but here is what I have been running recently.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/back-to-blade/

Working on this deck for the significant other so I'm trying to keep in a bit simple but so far it has been working out pretty well. Would love any thoughts since as a combo player this whole archtype is new to me.

First_Revenge

02-03-2017, 04:56 PM

So I guess it's not fully Esper or Deathblade but here is what I have been running recently.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/back-to-blade/

Working on this deck for the significant other so I'm trying to keep in a bit simple but so far it has been working out pretty well. Would love any thoughts since as a combo player this whole archtype is new to me.

Interesting. This doesnít look like any stoneblade deck Iíve encountered.

Iím trying to make recommendations on this, but most of my recommendations end up turning this into a deathblade deck XD.

Main deck I donít think youíre leveraging black mana that well. Bitterblossom is great and all, but it doesnít justify a third color in the main deck on its own. Really at least in my experience black gets run for thoughtseize and deathrite. Maindeck Iíd like to see some number of thoughtseizes.

Probably my inner deathblade player coming through here, but you have NINE 3 drops. Iíd really consider cutting something to make room for deathrites, so you can drop those suckers on T2. A turn 2 heretic cathar sounds like an absolute beating. T2 Back to basics also sounds great since you get to untap your lands and you have a mana dork to boot. T2 TNN is also just flat out good. Just seems like deathrite can really accelerate a huge chunk of your deck by an entire turn.

Generally speaking 3 snapcasters is probably excessive, a lot of lists are down to 1 I think maybe 2 at most.

Maybe consider running a wasteland or two?

Iíve found 4 drop wraths like cataclysm and supreme verdict to be too slow. You donít have a way to ramp them out so they truly are T4 plays. Against death and taxes in particular, thalia can push those back to T5 which is just way to slow. Consider running toxic deluge, zealous persecution, engineered plague, etc instead. Theyíre cheaper and a lot of the time you only really need -1/-1 anyway.

Also why 3 cliques in the SB?

Neo900

02-04-2017, 08:42 AM

So I guess it's not fully Esper or Deathblade but here is what I have been running recently.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/back-to-blade/

Working on this deck for the significant other so I'm trying to keep in a bit simple but so far it has been working out pretty well. Would love any thoughts since as a combo player this whole archtype is new to me.

I will try to give you an analysis from my point of view.
The generell idea of the deck is to be a midrange deck with disruptive and control elements. Your list plays no disruption at all besides that you have many cards with cmc 3 without accleration. The reasons why this deck wants Deathrite Shaman are his accleration, ramp, clock and life gain; so: all his abilities.

Lands:
You run 21 lands including 3 nonbasics in your Colors. the average cmc are 2.33 which is okay. You play only 8 fetchlands which is more the minimum. I would consider to play 10. This allows you to get access to your colors more often and easier. It reduces the chance to get into a Brainstorm lock and makes ponder also better.

Creatures:
4 True-Name Nemesis are way too many. I would split it into 2 TNN and 2 Vendilion Clique. The Flash ability makes it faster than TNN and Clique has a great disruptive ability.
Thalia is also strong. But we have to move away from cmc3 and it's not so good that we need it. Since it's legendary it can be become another weakpoint for us.
3 Snapcaster are also too much. He is great, no question. But it makes the deck slower and 2 are enough. I played only 1, right now 0 and I don't miss him.
4 Stoneforge are okay with 3 equipment. The question is if you want to play Esperblade or Deathblade. In Deathblade I would cut a SFM and the sword for "better" cards. In Esperblade I would keep it.
I would consider Gurmag Angler or Tombstalker. They're cheap, strong and big. A good finisher for this deck. I love to play Tombstalker because it flies and goes through Tarmogoyf.
Baleful Strix is also great. Trades nearly everytime 2:1. Besides that it flies and can get fuel on Jitte or a 5/5 lifelink, flying, vigilance, deathtouch monster with Batterskull. Good for attacking, even better in blocking.
In Deathblade you can run Leovold as well. He is a monster.

Other Spells:
Your other spells are quite good. The only thing are the Back to Basics. You have to kill you own manabase by default to make this a good card. This 3 out and add 3 Thoughtseize. I don't love this card. I discard everytime into my Liliana but this card wins games.
Other cards you should keep in mind:
Abrupt Decay is the flexible Allrounder. If you don't want to be Deathblade and more like Esperblade or just without green you have access to Vindicate and Council's Judgment. Vindicate hits also Lands, Judgment hits True-Name Nemesis and Hexproof.
Painful Truth is also quite good and helps you to reload after a powerful shot.
Liliana of the Veil on turn 2 with Deathrite Shaman is powerful as hell.

First_Revenge

02-07-2017, 02:53 AM

Back again, took a week off and played BUG delver another week for a bit of variety. Now itís back to my favorite list. Essentially the same list as last week, just added another surgical extraction in the SB. Iíll get leovold at some point and add it to this list.

For this week the theme of the tourney was fringe decks.
The list:
Lands-21

Match 1: Stax (Loss 1-2)
Game 1:
Had no idea what I was playing against and stax basically went off. Got locked out and hung around for a few turns after my opponent gained infinite life via staff of domination to see what the wincon was. Also got locked out by ghost quarter+crucible of worlds combo. First time Iíve been thoroughly punished for playing basics. Turns out the wincon was me sacrificing all my permanents and then getting beat down by 4 metalworker.

Game 2:
I donít remember what my SB plan was.

Managed to stick a stoneforge with a batterskull very early. Beat down plan was in full effect. Got mana flooded which was actually great this game since his mana denial strategy just didnít work. Killed him in relatively short order before he got set up.
If anyone has the misfortune of playing this deck, it has no point removal. Stoneforge+batterskull is great in this case since it generates 3 permanents which make stax/tanglewire awkward for them. Honestly keeping hand with 6 lands and a stoneforge might not be bad here.

Game 3:
Put pithing needle on ghost quarter to avoid totally getting hosed out of basics. Didnít end up mattering, got locked out of the game and I lost. A painful start to the night for sure. Stax is rough to play against.

Match 2: Burn (Win 2-0)
Game 1:
He mulliganed to 6 and I kept a fairly reasonable hand. Played 2 stoneforge mystics which he bolted taking a lot of pressure off my life total. Was also able to fetch mostly basics making his price of progress bad. Eventually stuck a jitte onto something and put the game out of reach.

Much the same as game one. He mulliganed down to 6, and I had enough counters to hang in there. Got all my basics again. Went down to 2 life, stuck a true name, glued jitte to it and sealed the game up from there.

Match 3: Opposition (Win 2-1)
Game 1:
Not much of a game. He mulliganed down to 4, on the play with no land he passes the turn. I drop a swamp/deathrite. Pass it back, he gets a fetch gets a trop and plays a deathrite. I wasteland his trop and dump a stoneforge into play. He concedes at this point

Game 2:
Because he conceded so early I had no idea how to sideboard. I knew he was playing a deck called opposition but I didnít know how it actually worked. So SB was awkward. Mostly went for meddling mages with the plan to name opposition.
Sideboard:
-1 vindicate
-2 bitterblossom
+1 surgical extraction
+2 meddling mage

I punted this game harder than the Atlanta falcons. I found out opposition basically plays a bunch of value X/1 idiots like coiling oracle, elvish visionary, baleful strix, wirewood symbiote, and noble hierarch. They then leverage these guys into oppositionís ability so I canít attack or block. I instantly regretted not siding in my creature hate cards. Thoughtseize revealed his hand was stacked to the gills with artifact hate, pithing needle, abrupt decay, and reclamation sage. Managed to get through the hate and land a stoneforge mystic with both batterskull and jitte in hand. While I was dealing with his artifact hate I was getting beaten down to about 3 life.
So what was the punt? Failing to blink in batterskull at end step. I could have gotten in an attack with both jitte and skull and won. But like an idiot I didnít. I realized my mistake as soon as I drew my card for turn. He eventually found opposition, tapped down my dudes and I died. I really think I couldíve salvaged a win out of that if I hadnít played so sloppy. I REALLY NEED TO SLOW DOWN WHEN I PLAY.

Game 3:
With a better understanding of the opposition deck I made the following adjustments. Had to apologize to the other player as I definitely labored too long on a few SB choices.
Sideboard:

Almost punted this one. Kept a 3 land hand with true name and jitte which seemed pretty good against him. Lead off thoughtseize revealed no countermagic and I took abrupt decay, his only method of dealing with jitte. Stuck a true name, passed the turn and he cast pithing needle.
At this point I think I punted but got away with it. I had force of will and brainstorm in hand with no open mana. Forcing the needle wouldíve made me pitch brainstorm which felt awful. So I let it resolve hoping he would name stoneforge instead. He named jitte and I realized I misplayed horribly.
He passes the turn, I brainstorm revealing a land and another true name. I play a second true name and essentially start a damage race. True name essentially meant opposition was worthless, his only out was to green sun zenith a craterhoof behemoth. He didnít and I won the damage race.

Generally tonight I made a lot of mistakes. Stax Iím not sure what I could have done differently. But opposition I punted twice. Once it cost me the game but the second time I was able to recover after brainstorm bailed me out. I really need to slow down my play so I donít screw up stoneforge activations. Itís not the first time Iíve totally blown through and end of turn batterskull. Still finished in the money though!

pipet76

02-07-2017, 07:38 PM

Hi everybody,

Iíve been testing this particular list for a while and it has proven to be quite effective. However I think it can be
improved. So, if you have any advice at all it would be great.

For the moment Iím thinking about:
- Replacing Jace (or either put him in the SB) for Leovold or something else
- Replacing the lonely S Pierce for either a Spell Snare or a Counterspell
- Playing maybe a couple of Tarmogoyfs
- Is there a place for Fatal Push in our deck?

Iíve been testing this particular list for a while and it has proven to be quite effective. However I think it can be
improved. So, if you have any advice at all it would be great.

For the moment Iím thinking about:
- Replacing Jace (or either put him in the SB) for Leovold or something else
- Replacing the lonely S Pierce for either a Spell Snare or a Counterspell
- Playing maybe a couple of Tarmogoyfs
- Is there a place for Fatal Push in our deck?

Hey pretty cool list you got here. I like the 4 color manabase with 3 basics. Its still greedier than i'd like, but you won't roll over and die to blood moon/wastelands either.

About the only obvious thing, i don't think you need 22 lands, a lot of lists get by with 21, and i don't really like creeping tar pit that much honestly. I think you cut the creeping tarpit and slot a leovold in there.

Spell pierce should probably stay as it is. Counterspell can be kinda clunky and you're lower on countermagic than i personally care to be, so i'd keep the spell pierce.

I like the idea of playing goyfs, but i think you'd have to cut either baleful strix of lingering souls for it. Might be good as a 2 off. You might want to consider gurmag angler/tombstalker in this slot as well. Tombstalker in particular is a 5/5 flier that a lot of times goes unblocked.

Fatal push is great, the problem is i don't think its better than abrupt decay/swords. Maindeck you already have 6 STPs/ADs so you don't want them there. I also like abrupt decay more in the sideboard as well as it answers a wider suite of threats(i.e. counterbalance.) About the only case i can see for fatal push is in a more conservative manabase that doesn't want to get too far into green. Since you're pretty much 4 colors at this point you might as well just play abrupt decay.

I don't like supreme verdict. Its 4 mana and even though its uncounterable it can be difficult to cast. Wastelands or thalia can make this cost 5. I've had this card languish in my hand a lot. I prefer toxic deluge since its cheaper and its mana cost is easier to pay.

Hey pretty cool list you got here. I like the 4 color manabase with 3 basics. Its still greedier than i'd like, but you won't roll over and die to blood moon/wastelands either.

About the only obvious thing, i don't think you need 22 lands, a lot of lists get by with 21, and i don't really like creeping tar pit that much honestly. I think you cut the creeping tarpit and slot a leovold in there.

Spell pierce should probably stay as it is. Counterspell can be kinda clunky and you're lower on countermagic than i personally care to be, so i'd keep the spell pierce.

I like the idea of playing goyfs, but i think you'd have to cut either baleful strix of lingering souls for it. Might be good as a 2 off. You might want to consider gurmag angler/tombstalker in this slot as well. Tombstalker in particular is a 5/5 flier that a lot of times goes unblocked.

Fatal push is great, the problem is i don't think its better than abrupt decay/swords. Maindeck you already have 6 STPs/ADs so you don't want them there. I also like abrupt decay more in the sideboard as well as it answers a wider suite of threats(i.e. counterbalance.) About the only case i can see for fatal push is in a more conservative manabase that doesn't want to get too far into green. Since you're pretty much 4 colors at this point you might as well just play abrupt decay.

I don't like supreme verdict. Its 4 mana and even though its uncounterable it can be difficult to cast. Wastelands or thalia can make this cost 5. I've had this card languish in my hand a lot. I prefer toxic deluge since its cheaper and its mana cost is easier to pay.

Youíre probably right regarding the 3 TNN. I could fit a Clique over there.

The thing about Jace is that I think that heís only good against control (Miracles and Shardless) in all the other matches he just sits there.

On the other hand if I do enter some goyfs (lets say 2) Iíll probably need another Tropical that could replace the tar pit.

I was also reluctant to S Veredict as well, but it has won me a lot of games lately in moments when my life total was kind of important: U/R Delver, Shardless, Grixis. I used to use Explosives (way to slow and we have already decay) and E Plague (which was not that effective).

Iíd also prefer another fluster, but I only have one :laugh:

First_Revenge

02-08-2017, 10:32 AM

Thanks a lot for your reply!

Youíre probably right regarding the 3 TNN. I could fit a Clique over there.

The thing about Jace is that I think that heís only good against control (Miracles and Shardless) in all the other matches he just sits there.

On the other hand if I do enter some goyfs (lets say 2) Iíll probably need another Tropical that could replace the tar pit.

I was also reluctant to S Veredict as well, but it has won me a lot of games lately in moments when my life total was kind of important: U/R Delver, Shardless, Grixis. I used to use Explosives (way to slow and we have already decay) and E Plague (which was not that effective).

Iíd also prefer another fluster, but I only have one :laugh:

Wait what? I don't remember saying anything about cutting TNN. 3 is a good number!! I wouldn't recommend going down to two.

I don't necessarily agree with that assessment of jace. He's a great finisher against most decks. I find i win about 80%-90% of games i'm able to untap with him in play. His brainstorming just puts you so far ahead late game.

Goyfs may be tough on your manabase. I'd recommend looking into gurmag angler/tombstalker as alternatives. Cheap fatties but less taxing on your manabase. That way you can cut the tarpit and go down to 21 lands without being too worried about colors. Another plus for these guys is that they avoid abrupt decay. If your opponent doesn't have STP or a bigger fattie these guys can be difficult to deal with.

I don't know those situations exactly, but remember this, youre casting deluge a full turn earlier than you are casting verdict, potentially even turn 2 with deathrite if things go really sideways. Maybe life would be less of an issue because you can cast deluge a turn earlier and avoid an entire attack step by an opponent?

Okay that's fine, maybe take out meddling mage for another pithing needle? Pithing needle has game against most decks in the format so its a good utility sideboard card.

pipet76

02-08-2017, 12:30 PM

Hi again! :smile:

Youíre probably right. Goyfs are not worth it.

The reason why Iím playing 3 MMage is that 4 very friendly players in my meta are playing storm (and I donít have a canonist). Since Iím playing 3 of them I have had no trouble beating them.

I agree with Tombstalker as well. I think Iíll play one instead of the Leovold, that way I donít have to worry for a green source except for ADecay.

Are you sure that going to 21 lands (and playing 3 basics) is going to work? I agree that tar pit is not that great, but I was thinking about playing a 3rd U Sea.

First_Revenge

02-08-2017, 02:03 PM

Hi again! :smile:

Youíre probably right. Goyfs are not worth it.

The reason why Iím playing 3 MMage is that 4 very friendly players in my meta are playing storm (and I donít have a canonist). Since Iím playing 3 of them I have had no trouble beating them.

I agree with Tombstalker as well. I think Iíll play one instead of the Leovold, that way I donít have to worry for a green source except for ADecay.

Are you sure that going to 21 lands (and playing 3 basics) is going to work? I agree that tar pit is not that great, but I was thinking about playing a 3rd U Sea.

Fair enough on the MM, itís a metagame call.

I really do like leovold, I only play one green source and Iím stretching to slot one of him in. Heís just so good and you can T2 him with deathrite. Hereís my advice to you, sit down and think about all the interactions that he makes awkward. Port, wasteland, thoughtseize, SOFI, jitte, deathrite, STP, AD, fatal push, and any burn spell to name a few. Basically any time your opponent tries to reach across the table and mess with you or your board they give you a card. And it gets better. He shuts off opposing cantrips! Brainstorm is bad, ponder becomes sorcery speed divining top, and spells like glimpse of nature just flat out don't work. If itís between him and tombstalker Iíd rather have leovold honestly. TNN is already a beater so Iíd rather have the utility of leovold.

Incidentally its great against storm as each copy of tendrils targets you, so draw like 10 cards! You would need more flusterstorms or mindbreak trap to properly leverage this advantage though since MM doesnít cut it in this scenario.

Eh to be fair my manabase and your manabase are really different. You can see my list on the previous page. Iím probably more of a 3.5 color deck, the lone trop is only there for DRS(anti graveyard shenanigans) and the SB ADs. But you do have 4 DRS and 6 cantrips so Iíd say going down to 21 is probably doable. So if you were going to cut something Iíd say cut a land. Regardless of whether you cut that land or not, just remember you are running a greedy 4 color manabase with wastelands(AND BASICS) so you shouldnít be too surprised if mana problems arise.

Neo900

02-09-2017, 07:03 PM

BUG is getting stronger right now. So I have to work on a list witch works better against any BUG deck. Going down to 3 Force of Will, more Baleful Strix, Snapcaster Mage and Jace are the first cards I want add. Also my Sideboard gets a make over. Additional Snapcaster should do it and more Abrupt Decay. Any other suggestions ?

First_Revenge

02-10-2017, 10:58 AM

BUG is getting stronger right now. So I have to work on a list witch works better against any BUG deck. Going down to 3 Force of Will, more Baleful Strix, Snapcaster Mage and Jace are the first cards I want add. Also my Sideboard gets a make over. Additional Snapcaster should do it and more Abrupt Decay. Any other suggestions ?

I don't see much bug in my meta so i admit to not being super experienced, but its a pretty wide archetype. If we're talking about the non-shardless variants i'd imagine fatal push is probably quite good in this matchup. Kills most of their critters as far as i'm aware, i think its probably the best goyf killer printed. Some bug decks run TNN now though so i guess be ready for that. Costs one less mana which is probably a good thing since i think most bug decks are on 4 wastelands? Makes snapping it back a lot easier as well. Still have no idea what we're supposed to do against shardless, i'm just grateful i've never had to face it thus far.

Neo900

02-10-2017, 11:54 AM

Shardless,non shardless, aluren and bug nic fit are the most bug decks around here. I'm back to lingering souls. the synergy between souls and liliana is too strong and so much value. Someone told me he wouldn't play Decay main. This would offer me more slots but I think Decay is important as an allrounder.

pipet76

02-11-2017, 06:05 PM

Shardless,non shardless, aluren and bug nic fit are the most bug decks around here. I'm back to lingering souls. the synergy between souls and liliana is too strong and so much value. Someone told me he wouldn't play Decay main. This would offer me more slots but I think Decay is important as an allrounder.

I wouldn't cut Decay at all, only if you find that having access to green is hard in your meta.

Against Shardless both Leovold and Notion Thief are excellent (Notion T a lot more since they can't decay it). Against BUG in general I'd say Perish, but that would mean killing ur DRS as well.

whocansay

02-13-2017, 01:36 PM

Guys, how do we beat Eldrazi? Chalice + ramp + big fat dudes is proving to be too much for me.

First_Revenge

02-13-2017, 05:12 PM

Right off the bat, Iíd say that eldrazi is all around a rough matchup for us. I actually swapped decks with an eldrazi player in my store and we played against each other to get a better feel for how each otherís decks worked. So everything Iím saying here is based off that experience playing the deck and talking to him about it.

I think the easiest/most effective way to screw eldrazi is to fool around with their manabase. Wastelanding any one of their sol lands can really slow them down, it can pose more of a problem than you'd think. I personally run 2 wasteland, but if your meta is crawling with eldrazi consider 3 or even 4 copies. Wastelanding eldrazi even once markedly improved my win rate because it slows their deck down so much and makes the city of traitors they have in hand awks.

TNN is also good in this matchup as it can stall out early threats, and allow you to survive a big reality smasher hit, but you will have to stabilize after that. TNN will most likely need a jitte to really grab control of the board and kill that smasher. Also bear in mind that they will do significant damage to themselves via ancient tomb so TNN has to do a lot less work than he normally would have to.

Honestly I donít think chalice on 1 is that big of a problem. Chalice on 1 pops up a lot in other decks, just prepare for that. I think the real problem is the follow up T2 Thought-knot seer. Itís a thoughtsieze on a 4/4 body. A lot of the time it takes the jitte I just tutored for with stoneforge or some other applicable piece of hate. Wastelanding their T1 sol land takes this play away from them. Iím convinced itís one of the major reasons I won games where I saw wasteland.

Toxic deluge is pretty good against them, but it can be painful to cast. I just find that supreme verdict is a bit too slow and too color intensive against a deck that runs 4 wastelands.

Meddling mages are also good naming reality smasher most likely. I think their only kill spell for it is dismember. In this case paying the 4 life can actual be pretty painful as theyíre already committing a lot of life to ancient tomb.

I donít personally run it, but gurmag angler/tombstalker seem good here. Theyíll eat all the smaller eldrazi and trade at parity with reality smasher.

All in all itís a pretty rough matchup though. Iím just thankful that as a whole the deck is on the downswing.

Secretly.A.Bee

02-14-2017, 02:07 AM

TNN only stops 1 point of damage from Smasher.

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whocansay

02-14-2017, 09:42 AM

Saying Chalice on 1 isn't a problem because it pops up in a lot of other decks isn't really making much sense. 'Just prepare for it' how?

Turn 1 Shaman is crucial for us, that's gone.

Brainstorm to dig for answers, gone.

Early disruption to steal their fatties, gone.

The only removal that deals with TKS and Smasher aside from Council's Judgment / Vindicate, gone.

So I guess I'll just... cut all those spells? Yes, FOW stops it but that's our only shot on the draw.

First_Revenge

02-14-2017, 10:30 AM

TNN only stops 1 point of damage from Smasher.

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Ya which why it needs help from a jitte most likely. TNN does stall out the non-trampling eldrazi though which gives you some breathing room to take a big hit from a reality smasher then stabalize the next turn. Just have to make sure your jitte or other equipment doesn't get grabbed by the thought-knot. Always seems to happen to me :cry:

Saying Chalice on 1 isn't a problem because it pops up in a lot of other decks isn't really making much sense. 'Just prepare for it' how?

Turn 1 Shaman is crucial for us, that's gone.

Brainstorm to dig for answers, gone.

Early disruption to steal their fatties, gone.

The only removal that deals with TKS and Smasher aside from Council's Judgment / Vindicate, gone.

So I guess I'll just... cut all those spells? Yes, FOW stops it but that's our only shot on the draw.

You misunderstand me. I probably should have said something like "chalice isn't a novel threat." I didn't go into detail because it's in other decks so you should already have plans against it. So you would just have to implement that plan, whatever it is. Typically its a FoW, maybe an abrupt decay(dicey in this case since they have wasteland). Chalice on the play is rough for us, as far as i know its FoW or bust essentially. Apologies for what maybe felt like a demeaning answer, but chalice is a pretty simple uninteractive threat. You just have to stop it at all costs or all the threats/removal you listed is gone and our deck ceases to function.

Generally my list runs 4x FoW/2x Spell pierce to deal with it in the main, but i'm a pretty control heavy list so that's how i deal with chalice. I don't have to board against it as heavily i guess since i have the tools to stop it maindeck. I don't know what your list looks like though so it may involve way more boarding than mine

jparula

02-14-2017, 11:11 AM

Right off the bat, Iíd say that eldrazi is all around a rough matchup for us. I actually swapped decks with an eldrazi player in my store and we played against each other to get a better feel for how each otherís decks worked. So everything Iím saying here is based off that experience playing the deck and talking to him about it.

I think the easiest/most effective way to screw eldrazi is to fool around with their manabase. Wastelanding any one of their sol lands can really slow them down, it can pose more of a problem than you'd think. I personally run 2 wasteland, but if your meta is crawling with eldrazi consider 3 or even 4 copies. Wastelanding eldrazi even once markedly improved my win rate because it slows their deck down so much and makes the city of traitors they have in hand awks.

TNN is also good in this matchup as it can stall out early threats, and allow you to survive a big reality smasher hit, but you will have to stabilize after that. TNN will most likely need a jitte to really grab control of the board and kill that smasher. Also bear in mind that they will do significant damage to themselves via ancient tomb so TNN has to do a lot less work than he normally would have to.

Honestly I donít think chalice on 1 is that big of a problem. Chalice on 1 pops up a lot in other decks, just prepare for that. I think the real problem is the follow up T2 Thought-knot seer. Itís a thoughtsieze on a 4/4 body. A lot of the time it takes the jitte I just tutored for with stoneforge or some other applicable piece of hate. Wastelanding their T1 sol land takes this play away from them. Iím convinced itís one of the major reasons I won games where I saw wasteland.

Toxic deluge is pretty good against them, but it can be painful to cast. I just find that supreme verdict is a bit too slow and too color intensive against a deck that runs 4 wastelands.

Meddling mages are also good naming reality smasher most likely. I think their only kill spell for it is dismember. In this case paying the 4 life can actual be pretty painful as theyíre already committing a lot of life to ancient tomb.

I donít personally run it, but gurmag angler/tombstalker seem good here. Theyíll eat all the smaller eldrazi and trade at parity with reality smasher.

All in all itís a pretty rough matchup though. Iím just thankful that as a whole the deck is on the downswing.

If you play my list, it is actually quite a good match-up (i must have won around 80% of my games against eldrazi). Your best cards against them are Baleful Strix, Swords to Plowshares (Snapcaster Mage) and Stoneforge Mystic. Post sideboard you want the abrupt decays in for the chalice's, tiny eldrazi's, jitte and grim monlith (if they run) and you want Life from the Loam to wasteland lock them.

Post sideboard you want to take out force of will (because of cavern of souls) and 1 Jace (it's somewhat slow sometimes) and in come +4 Abrupt Decay and 1 Life from the Loam. Beware of All is Dust, it is a way you can lose.

List: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/552233#online

ClimbGneiss

02-14-2017, 01:01 PM

Guys, how do we beat Eldrazi? Chalice + ramp + big fat dudes is proving to be too much for me.

The way that I construct Deathblade, I just fold to Eldrazi. My play WOULD be to win the roll and go first in the first and third games. Play drs into true name. Keep wastelands and force their key threat. Like Mud, they can be trapped by poor topdecks, so the key is to win the first 3 or 4 turns.

Like I said, my build folds to Eldrazi. I don't run Abrupt decay or Baleful strix. Jace is too slow, and Chalice is a beating. I also run 2 wastelands rather than 3 or 4.

I think eldrazi has largely been on the down swing; especially with the increase of bug decks. But, if their are dedicated eldrazi players near you, you have to run the build with Abrupt decay, and maybe Liliana and Lingering Souls. Spell Snare would be a great inclusion for you as well.

For me, I chose to build my deck to have game against Wasteland decks, miracles, and the general large tournament field.

For me, the most common foes that present problems are shardless, jund, maverick and aggro loam. I don't know that I could warp my deck much more and not start losing to delver decks and miracles more often.

whocansay

02-14-2017, 02:09 PM

Can we see your list ClimbGneiss?

Neo900

02-14-2017, 06:09 PM

I played our weekly and we were 6 people and played 3 rounds. I become first with this list:

Elves:
Zealous Persecution, Deluge and Pithing Needle are very important. As additional removal you have Abrupt Decay. Thoughtseize is also quite good to disrupt the opponent.
Liliana, Jace, Batterskull are all cards which are quite slow and need more time to set up.

NicFit:
Swords on Explorer slows them down a lot. The rest of the game I counter their big creatures. Snapcaster was great with Counterspell.
Pithing Needle and Baleful Strix are quite good. Needle to stop Top or Deed and Strix trades very well with fatties.
Spell Snare and Pierce are okay but I think Strix is better. Spell Snare hits nothing except GSZ x=1. Spell Pierce is okay but usually they have so much mana they could pay it.

Infect:
Jace is very slow and the life gain from Batterskull is useless. But Decay and Thoughtseize is great.

I like this list so far. Maybe I cut a 4th SFM and the sword for more aggressive cards. Maybe bitterblossom is back ? I missed Painful Truth or I bring in Thoughtseize again and Inquisition for sideboarding ?

OphelieSeize

02-14-2017, 10:43 PM

Played in a 13 man last friday and went 4-0, my LGS is very very competitive with mostly tier 1-1.5 decks and then a lot of crazy combo decks, we have many people who have done very well at GPs and other big events including the delver player who was the only loss for Reid Duke at GP Lui, with that said this night was not quite as crazy as they usually are with several of our most competitive players either not there on different decks or just playing standard.

Now i really want to have 2-3 Snapcaster Mage in the deck, with combo on the rise now with all the fair decks running around the card is nuts, not only can it buy you turns vs combo, it is great against fair decks and it gives you another more sublte way of gaining card advantage and also options, i also really want to try Liliana MB and another Spell Pierce or Spell Snare, both are great options, but otherwise i am very satisfied with my MB right now.

But with the changes i mentioned above i think this is where i would want to be with my SB, i think surgical is in an amazing spot right now especially with snapcaster flashing it back, it is absolutely brutal against miracles as well as being good at stripping many decks down to their most basic threats, or simply making your threats easier to stick by grabbing FoW or removal spells, it helps you constrict your opponents options.

Also i recommend anyone wanting to fuck with elves really hard to try Mana Maze, the card absolutely obliterates them, it is also very flexible and can shut down more decks than you might think, yes it's not the extreme hoser that some cards are against all combo decks but it gives them a really hard time and often makes it so if they try to combo off without planning the hell out of their turn near impossible, or just impossible anyway, plus it isn't a fire and forget thing it's something they have to consider for the rest of the game.

Neo900

02-14-2017, 11:08 PM

I was very suprised how smoth my 3 snapcaster list runs. I think my sideboard I had is not optimal. More grave hate also surgical is too good.
Your list reminds me on my own until today.
I guess we are focusing on to much. We want decay, creature removal, disruption, counter, card advantage and a fast clock. With the list I posted above we focus on a more simplier structure and are able to release pressure from the mana base, less greedy.
I want to change minor things but overall I'm impressed by this list. The greedy main board is the standard and very common but I guess, right now we can push all the greedy things towards sideboard, and get a more stable and consistent main board.
I'm a fan of grindy games creature against creature, clock against clock. The 4 Stoneforge Mystic package is a meta call but besides that I wonder how rare I draw one of them. Also I think that 3 Equipment cause into drawing one of them and our sfm can't gain important card advantage.
I will work for now on this controlish, less greedy list. I have two weeks until the next big event. The biggest issue right now is that I take long with this list to get something done. I don't have this "I win button" like miracles. Is Monastery Mentor an option ? 2 copies seem with a lot of Snapcaster Mages quite strong. The Mentor can draw some attention while on board and force the opponent to remove him while we can just do our stuff and generate tokens.

OphelieSeize

02-15-2017, 12:02 AM

I was very suprised how smoth my 3 snapcaster list runs. I think my sideboard I had is not optimal. More grave hate also surgical is too good.
Your list reminds me on my own until today.
I guess we are focusing on to much. We want decay, creature removal, disruption, counter, card advantage and a fast clock. With the list I posted above we focus on a more simplier structure and are able to release pressure from the mana base, less greedy.

I completely agree with having snaps, i would be running them but i just don't have any right now, and as far as how greedy the deck is i think it could be worse, a lot of decks don't have the option and with us we really get to be as greedy or as stable as we want, so i think if you are having issues with it you can really just tune your list to the need.

I want to change minor things but overall I'm impressed by this list. The greedy main board is the standard and very common but I guess, right now we can push all the greedy things towards sideboard, and get a more stable and consistent main board.

Yeah this is def an option, i honestly have been considering going to 1 green source and just going stronger on the white for council and maybe just dropping 1-2 decays in the side, i think with the snaps and surgicals the miracles matchup will be good enough without the decays, though i think i need more testing to confirm or deny that hunch.

I'm a fan of grindy games creature against creature, clock against clock. The 4 Stoneforge Mystic package is a meta call but besides that I wonder how rare I draw one of them. Also I think that 3 Equipment cause into drawing one of them and our sfm can't gain important card advantage.
I will work for now on this controlish, less greedy list. I have two weeks until the next big event. The biggest issue right now is that I take long with this list to get something done. I don't have this "I win button" like miracles. Is Monastery Mentor an option ? 2 copies seem with a lot of Snapcaster Mages quite strong. The Mentor can draw some attention while on board and force the opponent to remove him while we can just do our stuff and generate tokens.

Personally i think we are the wrong kind of deck for mentor, just with us not really having any easy ways to abuse him like miracles does, and my personal opinion is that 3 equipment MB is mostly for stoneblade decks, but that could just be that i like being equipment light, sometimes i run SoFaI in my SB but that just depends on how many fair blue decks i am seeing, for me i would probably never run 4 SFM but that's cause i like spreading my threats out a little more, less eggs in one basket so to speak, but honestly mentor could be worth testing, if you find it works for you i would love to see it do well, i just feel it's to big of an investment when we could just be resolving TNN.

I feel like this deck really just wants to play like a control deck more than anything else, it's slower than any of the other midrange decks and it is less controlly than miracles or stoneblade, but i feel like what i lacks in these areas it makes up by being incredibly flexible, i honestly think it's one of the most flexible decks in the format right now considering how much the MB and SB can be tuned, but i also think that's what keeps it from being a top deck right now, it gives up having a super strong game plan by trying to deal with every kind of situation that it could run into, and deploying a wide arsenal of threats, instead of being precision focused like all the tier 1 decks, but honestly that's what made me fall in love with the deck.

Neo900

02-15-2017, 12:24 AM

You are totally right. I thought longer about Mentor instead of common things like Bitterblossom and Lingering Souls.
More Snapcaster offers many new situations.
I moved the Strix to main and cut sfm and sofai. For the sideboard I added an extra surgical and Bitterblossom

First_Revenge

02-15-2017, 10:26 AM

Also i recommend anyone wanting to fuck with elves really hard to try Mana Maze, the card absolutely obliterates them, it is also very flexible and can shut down more decks than you might think, yes it's not the extreme hoser that some cards are against all combo decks but it gives them a really hard time and often makes it so if they try to combo off without planning the hell out of their turn near impossible, or just impossible anyway, plus it isn't a fire and forget thing it's something they have to consider for the rest of the game.

I've seen this card brought up before, and honestly i wasn't sure what to make of it. I didn't include it in my board since honestly i wasn't horribly confident in its usefulness. Can you list some decks where you've found success? I can clearly see how its good against elves, but i already have 3 crowd control spells for them, so i'm curious exactly where/how you use it.

On a more humorous note i found this funnier than i probably should have.

Like I mentioned, I built this list to have game versus my meta locally and at-large:
At my LGS, there are many lands, br reanimator and blade decks.
At large in New England, Lands, Miracles, DnT, Delver and Shardless.

Like I mentioned above, I struggle a lot versus shardless, maverick and aggro loam.

I routinely beat Show and Tell, Infect and BR reanimator. I feel like I win 55% or more versus Lands (although, they recently morphed into GQ instead of Port), blade mirrors, DnT, and Delver.

jparula

02-15-2017, 12:30 PM

I've seen this card brought up before, and honestly i wasn't sure what to make of it. I didn't include it in my board since honestly i wasn't horribly confident in its usefulness. Can you list some decks where you've found success? I can clearly see how its good against elves, but i already have 3 crowd control spells for them, so i'm curious exactly where/how you use it.

On a more humorous note i found this funnier than i probably should have.

What does working for a ghost entail anyway?

Just play cursed totem or engineered plague against elves.

First_Revenge

02-15-2017, 12:32 PM

Just play cursed totem or engineered plague against elves.

I already run one in the sideboard, might go up to 2. Cursed totem is interesting but probably not a great idea. That shuts off both my stoneforge mystic and deathrite shaman.

jparula

02-15-2017, 12:39 PM

I already run one in the sideboard, might go up to 2. Cursed totem is interesting but probably not a great idea. That shuts off both my stoneforge mystic and deathrite shaman.

Stoneforge for batterskull, because for jitte you can just cast it for the same cost, i think it's a fair price for shutting off all their creatures including wirewood symbiote, dryad arbor, quirion ranger, mana elves (DRS, heritage druid,...).

First_Revenge

02-15-2017, 12:45 PM

Stoneforge for batterskull, because for jitte you can just cast it for the same cost, i think it's a fair price for shutting off all their creatures including wirewood symbiote, dryad arbor, quirion ranger, mana elves (DRS, heritage druid,...).

Okay thats a good point i suppose i just take out hte drs and install my normal crowd control suite.

Does seem kinda niche hate though. Maybe i'll give it a shot later.

OphelieSeize

02-15-2017, 03:53 PM

I've seen this card brought up before, and honestly i wasn't sure what to make of it. I didn't include it in my board since honestly i wasn't horribly confident in its usefulness. Can you list some decks where you've found success? I can clearly see how its good against elves, but i already have 3 crowd control spells for them, so i'm curious exactly where/how you use it.

Well the card is a very tempo oriented card, but it can buy you several turns vs a lot of the more explosive decks, it pitches to force which is awesome but i will try to give some examples of situations that the card is super useful and where it might not stack up against it's fire and forget counterpart cards like Flusterstorm, the way you want to use this card is to combat decks that are 1-2 colors and are focused on comboing off or just playing a lot of cards these decks include the following.

ANT
Aluren
Shardless Bug
Elves
Any mono combo decks
Burn (not always great but can slow them down considerably)

-Pros-

-It is something that has to be considered at all points when comboing off
-It pitches to force
-It is an enchantment which are notoriously hard to deal with
-It has Rebecca Guay art and the old frame

-Cons-

-Double edged sword, it can make your lines of play awkward (although this is mitigated slightly by the fact that we are 4 colors)
-Costs 2 mana

Also i see some talk of Cursed Totem as a solution to elves but the card just looks horrible to me, it shuts off 7-8 of your own creatures, it doesn't pitch to force, and it doesn't stop them from just glimpsing you to death or just drawing a shit ton of cards with new Nissa, if you want to run some very focused elf hate this isn't the card for the job, in fact i can't think of many decks that wouldn't be happy to see you play it.

whocansay

02-17-2017, 03:54 AM

I keep getting blown out by Wastelands.. Running a greedy mana base off of 21 lands is just getting too tight.

Considering a Loam in the SB to deal with this.. Make sense?

ClimbGneiss

02-17-2017, 08:07 AM

I keep getting blown out by Wastelands.. Running a greedy mana base off of 21 lands is just getting too tight.

Considering a Loam in the SB to deal with this.. Make sense?

Run one of each basic and cut all of the green cards except Deathrite Shaman and a single land to activate DRS' green ability.

First_Revenge

02-17-2017, 10:04 AM

I keep getting blown out by Wastelands.. Running a greedy mana base off of 21 lands is just getting too tight.

Considering a Loam in the SB to deal with this.. Make sense?

Personally i consider wasteland to be too prevalent to not have a maindeck answer for it. Per mtggoldfish wasteland appears in 40% of decks, and each deck has an average of 3.6 copies of wasteland. It should probably be something you should plan for maindeck. I haven't tried it but life from the loam seems a bit slow and i'd rather simply play maindeck basics and avoid the wasteland problem altogether.

Here's my semi-greedy mana base slightly modified to accommodate more green sources. Typically i like to have 2 basic islands, but you're deeper into 4 color if i recall correctly, so that island gets swapped out for a bayou. If you feel you need more green sources might cut an underground sea for a tropical island.

Running basics doesn't actually make this deck more resilient against Wasteland. Fetching basics often prevents you from casting certain spells (we want all 3 colors), and having a mix of basics and nonbasics in play makes opposing wastelands more effective at cutting you off a single color or combination of colors (most importantly UU).

ClimbGneiss

02-17-2017, 01:46 PM

Running basics doesn't actually make this deck more resilient against Wasteland. Fetching basics often prevents you from casting certain spells (we want all 3 colors), and having a mix of basics and nonbasics in play makes opposing wastelands more effective at cutting you off a single color or combination of colors (most importantly UU).

This is true... somewhat. Sometimes all you need is to have a basic on the first turn to make all the plays your opening hand requires and avoiding getting Wastelanded is the key to that. Specifically, against delver and lands.

Of course, this is why mana leak and diabolic edict are appealing.

whocansay

02-18-2017, 11:56 AM

Apologies if this was discussed already, but what do you guys think about Diego Massone's winning deck from last year's MKM Series?

Legacy just in general isnít a format that rotates a lot, itís more cyclical than anything else. So the list youíre posting would probably work pretty well even today given the right meta. This deck seems pretty good against aggro decks, those 3 baleful strixes are basically removal spells. So if youíre in an aggro heavy meta this is probably not a bad start.

This list does appear to suffer somewhat against combo due to somewhat thin countermagic. I'm in a more combo meta so i don't think i'd personally run this list.

About the only thing I can say this least probably needs is leovold. I donít think he was around when this list was made, but I do think he has a spot in this list. I'd probably like another ponder as well, that card is simply phenomenal.

Neo900

02-21-2017, 09:33 AM

Deathblade can be so strong because it's so flexible. Our core is quite small or are cards like Brainstorm. Brainstorm is a core card because it is so strong. Deathrite Shaman is also the allrounder and does nearly everything. So the only unflexible card we have is Stoneforge Mystic. All sfm does is searching equipment. Mostly we have 2 decisions but we pick batterskull quite often because it's the strongest play we got.
Everything else is a flexslot. How many Snapcaster? How many True Name? Discard, Decay etc.
This allows us to react to nearly every metagame. With up to 4 colors we get access to a lot of cards.
So I would say there is no "outdated" list, only metagame calls.

JackaBo

02-21-2017, 09:56 AM

Isnt this deck very well positioned in the current meta trend: miracle forcing every deck to run decay and the resurgence of TNN. TNN and batterskull is decay/push-proof and we can run decay of our own for CB and liliana/ZP for opposing TNN:s.

Skickat frŚn min iPhone med Tapatalk

First_Revenge

02-23-2017, 01:06 PM

Isnt this deck very well positioned in the current meta trend: miracle forcing every deck to run decay and the resurgence of TNN. TNN and batterskull is decay/push-proof and we can run decay of our own for CB and liliana/ZP for opposing TNN:s.

Skickat frŚn min iPhone med Tapatalk

This is very open ended question, so this is all my opinion, feel free to agree/disagree, I love the discussion that follows questions like this.

Yes and no? Weíll put aside the issue of miracles warping the meta to the point where a lot of decks have to run AD as thatís a separate topic.

I think TNN is riding pretty high on the back of the recent printing of push and reid dukeís list which used leovold, TNNís new best friend. So thereís really no denying his reclaimed popularity.

I donít feel like weíve become any better or worse honestly. I feel like dukeís list leverages TNN better than our deck does, it has 8 mana dorks and noble hierarch pumps TNN. But because it runs 8 mana dorks it is less of a control build than our deck(at least the way I build it). So at least in my eyes itís a trade off. In my local store gurmag angler/tombstalker/tasigur have enjoyed a return to favor as they dance around push, AD, and the ĖX/-1s that kill TNN. They also impose a faster clock than TNN.

Regarding AD, it is an answer to miracles that we can run, but Iíve always felt it comes at a significant cost. AD more or less makes us a 4 color deck which makes us prone to wasteland(in about 60% of decks), blood moon, etc... Iíve always been more comfortable with a 3.5 color deck with one green source because it lets me play basics and develop my mana. If anything Iíd say running AD has made us stronger against miracles, but weaker against anyone running non basic land hate.

Side note, weíve had a previous discussion about Liliana actually being good in stoneblade. I think we came out deadlocked, Iím not convinced since we donít really have that many cards we can toss comfortably aside from lingering souls. But it may work out for you.

Neo900

02-26-2017, 01:21 PM

the old Liliana question. As a good stuff deck we have situations we want to keep our stuff. I tried Kaya, Ghost assassin in the same slot. Kaya's abilities are quite good but can hurt yourself. Kaya creates more card advantage for sure but Liliana is more devastating with her abilities.
Liliana the last hope looks interesting and have some nice looking abilities.

whocansay

02-26-2017, 02:50 PM

Isn't Kiora, the Crashing Wave really nice against Delver decks?

pipet76

02-26-2017, 05:28 PM

Hi everybody,

I've heard that FOW is not very good against Lands. Do you really think that this is true? I mean, countering an Exploration, Gamble, Manabond or sometimes even Crop Rotation can be a game changer.

Guess my question is, do you use FOW after sideboard in this situation? I'm talking about Lands, not Turbo Lands.

ClimbGneiss

02-26-2017, 10:03 PM

Hi everybody,

I've heard that FOW is not very good against Lands. Do you really think that this is true? I mean, countering an Exploration, Gamble, Manabond or sometimes even Crop Rotation can be a game changer.

Guess my question is, do you use FOW after sideboard in this situation? I'm talking about Lands, not Turbo Lands.

Yes, I bring in my 4th sideboard fow post board. It is indeed good. Stopping exploration is a very good plan. Or, stopping loam for one turn whIle you get a drs active. It's definitely good. I have an extensive amount of experience in this matchup.
A good key in this matchup is to spread their resources thin while maintaining consistent pressure. Of course true name is best, but jace the Mind Sculptor and leovold also work.

pipet76

02-27-2017, 05:46 PM

Yes, I bring in my 4th sideboard fow post board. It is indeed good. Stopping exploration is a very good plan. Or, stopping loam for one turn whIle you get a drs active. It's definitely good. I have an extensive amount of experience in this matchup.
A good key in this matchup is to spread their resources thin while maintaining consistent pressure. Of course true name is best, but jace the Mind Sculptor and leovold also work.

Thanks a lot!

What do you actually mean by "spreading their resources thin"? I mean, like actual examples.

:)

ClimbGneiss

03-01-2017, 08:43 PM

Thanks a lot!

What do you actually mean by "spreading their resources thin"? I mean, like actual examples.

:)

Sorry for the long delay. Here's a pretty typical sequence for a deathblade player on the play vs lands:

T1, play Deathrite Shaman. Fetch a basic Swamp if you can.
T1, play Mox Diamond, discard chaff, play land, play exploration. You Force of will it. If they play Punishing fire, you probably Force of will it. If they play loam, again you probably Force of will it.

T2, fetch an island told hold up Spell pierce if you have it s you can use your Deathrite and your Swamp to eat the hypothetical fire or loam. Eat the Punishing Fire or life from the loam if you can.
If you just Force of willed gamble or exploration, Then you can lay down sfm looking for sword of fire and ice or true name nemesis. Or, leovold.
T2, opponent probably gambles for loam or for the piece to finish the depths combo and you probably don't have a way of stopping it. Keep an eye on which lands end up in their yard. Always keep their yard as empty as possible. This a pretty critical turn for the opponent, if they have the right hand and rip the right topdeck, they can still be very hard to beat.
T3, cast jace and depending on game state start ticking up or brainstorming. If you are fighting off Punishing fire, it may be best to start ticking up. Presuming they don't have loam online it will be absolutely tie them up to Punishing Fire a new threat every turn AND jace ticking up. If your opponent is setting up dark depths or they are loaming, you should look for Swords to Plowshares, clique, Wasteland, and force of will as various measures to disrupt loam or depths.

whocansay

03-02-2017, 05:04 PM

What kind of configuration would you guys bring to a death and taxes / bug Delver heavy meta? Do I drop FOWs? Jace?

First_Revenge

03-03-2017, 10:14 AM

Basics mostly. Both of those decks run 4 wastelands so basics will serve you well.

Against death and taxes, the next most important thing is stopping their vial. If they don't have vial they actually have to cast their creatures, which costs mana. That's mana they can't use tying up your basics with things like rishadan port. Other than that i bring in my sweeper suite, zealous persecution, toxic deluge, engineered plague, any sweeper that can get value really. Also containment priest is good since she stops vial in its tracks, in addition to the new flikerwisp+recruiter of the guard combo.

Against bug one of your best cards is wasteland. I think most builds run 1 or zero basics so any sort of mana denial you can find will be helpful. BUG decks are evolving as well. They are moving away from goyfs to the tasigur/angler/tombstalker/TNN due to the popularity of killspells likes fatal push and abrupt decay. This makes your most valuable cards TNN and STP(the one killspell that takes out the delve fatties.) Stoneforge mystic is somewhat less valuable in this matchup since its pretty likely to bite the bullet early due to all the removal they have for it. IMO, your best bet is fetching jitte and gluing it to TNN after making sure they don't have any more ADs in hand. That's easier said than done though. Bring in other sideboard kill spells you have, but generally i bring in anything i have that deals with abrupt decay. My wincon here is a TNN+jitte and AD is a really problem for that plan.

Generally both matchups are tough, but manageable. In terms of actual cards i take out, you're right to take out the slow stuff. In these matches bitterblossom+jace are usually yanked which frees up 3-4 slots right away. Mana intensive cards like counterspell might go as well, especially in Dnt. If you're finding that your meta is really saturated with these decks try running 3-4 wastelands with basics of your own.

whocansay

03-05-2017, 01:19 PM

Thanks chief, that's useful information. Cramming those basics in with such a greedy manabase is gonna be tough, but a man's gotta do..

First_Revenge

03-09-2017, 12:50 PM

Back to the stoneblade after a few weeks playtesting bug delver. Really need some Lilianas for that. I couldíve sworn Iíd be doing this a lot more than once a month.
Anyway the list should look familiar, did some more fine tuning. Removed the two bitterblossoms as they felt somewhat underpowered. Replaced them with 1 leovold and 1 lingering souls. Other than that the list remains unchanged.

Game 1: I donít think Iíve ever won Game 1 against a dredge deck, but first time for everything. On the play I thoughtseized him revealing breakthrough, LED, and some dredgers. I took his breakthrough, but left his LED behind. Thankfully I had FoW in hand. I passed the turn, FoW his LED, and went to my turn. I was out of hate at this point, so I played SFM fetching batterskull to apply some pressure. Off the top he rips cabal therapy taking my batterskull. I played TNN after that and eventually just beat him down with TNN and SFM. He never found another LED or breakthrough and I was able to thoughtseize him again to keep him off 7 cards so he couldnít discard.

Sloppy game of magic. Mulliganed to 6 and I probably shouldíve mulliganed to 5. I kept a no lander. As I recall, the keep was 2x DRS, 1X ponder, 1X brainstorm, 1X FoW, 1X Spell Pierce. The plan was to use the scry and the draw for my turn to find a land, and deploy DRS+Tropical island. It didnít work out that way. I didnít find a land for another 3 turns. I was only able to win this game because he kept a hand with one breakthrough, which got eaten by my FoW. He also cast cabal therapy targeting surgical extraction. He figured that I had some of those in my hand since Iíd decided to keep a no land hand. I played so badly I managed to convince him I had a good hand. While I was busy trying to find land he was busy trying to find an enabler or pitch to hand size. I got my land, set up DRS+ tropical island, and eventually got established. He never recovered, resulting in a very sloppy win.

Match 2: Nahiri Control 2-1 Win
Game 1: Had no idea what I was playing against. He started out by playing a bunch of basic islands/plains/mountain. I thought I was playing miracles but he never counterbalanced or topped, and he lightning helixíd my deathrite so I was very confused. Shortly thereafter he cast blood moon on T3 or T4 and I essentially choked on mana. I stuck around in the game to see how exactly he wins, and it turns out he casts nahiri, the harbinger defends it, then ultimates into an emrakul. At some point in there he cast TNN as well. Game 1 loss, but learned how the deck works.

Game 2:
With a better idea of what exactly he was doing I made the following SB adjustments.

My opening hand was 6 lands and a batterskull. Obvious mulligan. My six included a deathrite, FoW, TNN, and some fetches. I managed to T2 TNN into play with deathrite using my FoW as protection, and I fetched only basics. He played a blood moon the next turn which did make the other lands in my hand awkward, but I had 2 islands and a swamp in play so I was in okay shape. Proceeded to beat him down with TNN. Then he resolved an engineered on 3 and detonated taking out both his blood moon and my TNN. With a freed up mana base I cast TNN and SFM fetching batterskull. Eventually glued batteskull to TNN for the win.

Game 3:
I made no SB adjustments.

Opening hand was awkward. TNN, Jace, FoW, brainstorm, a dual, and 2 fetches. Fastfowarding to his T3, he resolves blood moon, and all I have on board are my two flooded strands. At this point I have TNN, Jace, FoW, wasteland, spell pierce, a blue dual, and SFM. I fetch an island and a plains I can cast SFM, but canít cast TNN or Jace. If I fetch an island I can cast TNN and Jace, but my clock is slow. I chose to fetch two islands. My next turn I resolved the TNN with FoW backup. He spends his turn durdling with cantrips and casts surgical extraction targeting FoW. I resolve a jace that turn, and apply pressure with TNN. He plays engineered explosives on 3 and detonates, to get my true name, but his blood moon is in the crossfire. He follows up with a TNN of his own and passes the turn. I brainstorm with jace revealing among other things, a vendilion clique. Which I put in hand. I play stoneforge mystic fetching batterskull with my freed up mana to shuffle away the bad and present another threat. I pass the turn. Now things got interesting. At my end step he casts snapcaster mage targeting surgical extraction. In response I attempt to cast zealous persecution to kill both his TNN and his snapcaster. He FoW it, and surgically extracts all of my TNNs. He attempts to resolve blood moon, his last card in hard, but in response I flash in clique. At this point heís down to 5 life. He passes the turn, clique swing puts him to 2. Jace fateseal shows his last card as an island. Win.

Match 3: Aggro Loam Draw.
We were the only 2-0 players so we ended up just splitting. We played it out but honestly I donít remember the match to well since I wasnít taking it too seriously at this point. Generally aggro loam felt like a beating, I need to study this matchup if I play it again seriously.

ClimbGneiss

03-30-2017, 09:31 PM

Hello all:

So, with the current meta being swamped with miracles and bug, and a few other non-magic reasons, I had been taking a few weeks off from playing. Recently, a couple of other familiar deathblade sourcers and I have been discussing how to tweak the deck to have favorable matchups vs miracles and bug midrange.

The answer we have come up with finding competit I've means of consistent card advantage:
Planeswalkers, Snapcasters, Baleful strix, etc.

Personally, I'm wondering if Stoneforge Mystic is any good right now. While active equipment is good, creatures are very easy to answer right now so you need to be getting your 2 for 1's in or have non-targetable creatures.

We are still brewing up something so I'm sure you'll see some posts about it soon.

Do any of you have any lists that have been tweaked to fight the recent meta?

First_Revenge

03-31-2017, 02:08 PM

Hereís something Iíd try vs BUG. Thankfully I donít have too much miracles in my meta, but my win rate against that deck is horrendous.

Iíd change my deck to this, if I knew I was against a lot of BUG.

Big additions:
3 Wastelands-BUG has a really sensitive manabase. Iíd slot in one more in addition to the two I normally run.
3 SFM-Youíre right that SFM is really easy to kill. Going down to 3 is probably fine. Iím not really on board with cutting her entirely though.
Tombstalker-The BUG decks in my meta have been putting in the delve fatties as they dance around AD and fatal push. Tombstalker is good here because they really canít remove it as far as Iím aware. Just swords away their delve fatty and go to town.

If you really have a lot of BUG going around you could probably cut jaces, a FOW, a thoughtseize, and counterspell.

I'd also be curious if Path to Exile becomes a good SB going forward. They don't have any basics to fetch so it behaves like a better STP in this case. Divert and Misdirection could also be quite good in the SB.

I was the last months quite successful with Deathblade. I'm playing right now Sword of Light and Shadow as third equipment and 4 Stoneforge Mystic. The last times against BUG and Miracles. I love SoLaS. It provides life in grindy match ups and bring backs creatures. Especially Strix and Snapcaster Mage are great to get back. Besides that my list changed completely. Abrupt Decay and Thoughtseize are in the sideboard right now which offers me 5 more slots main. Both cards are great but not in every match up. This change allows me to be more consistent and makes sideboarding easier. I had the problem that I have to side out so much but less to side in. So my list looks like this: